TIAN Peiyu, WANG Xihui, FAN Yu, ZHU Anqi
In recent years, there have been more frequent disasters occurred in China, which pose significant threats to the lives and property of the people. To cope with the increasing complexity and severity of disasters, decision-makers need to store and dispatch emergency supplies rationally based on the real situation. Current studies on regional dispatch considering multiple warehouses and demand points are insufficient, and the problems such as ‘who/how/how much to dispatch’ have not been well-answered. To solve these problems, this paper proposes three regional dispatching strategies (including strict administrative hierarchy supply dispatch, cross-administrative hierarchy supply dispatch and free and nearest supply dispatch strategies) based on a comprehensive summary of relevant case studies, then builds a multi-agent simulation model based on deprivation cost. A simulation experiment is conducted in Mengcheng County, Bozhou City, Anhui Province, and the result shows that when the regional demand is large in a short time, the free proximity strategy can minimize the total social logistics cost. On the contrary, when the regional demand is small, the differences of the total social cost among three strategies are small. In conclusion, our research suggests that, when facing severe disasters and catastrophes, governments should cooperate and coordinate on the dispatching of relief supplies. However, when facing normal disasters without the risk of life, the demand can be satisfied with the strict administrative strategy.
