Lifelines in case of Natural Disaster Emergencies

In order to handle Natural disasters, emergency areas are often individuated over the territory, close to populated centres. In these areas, rescue services are located which respond with resources and materials for population relief. A method of automatic positioning of these centres in case of a flood or an earthquake is presented. The positioning procedure consists of two distinct parts developed by the research group of Prof Michael G. H. Bell of Imperial College, London, refined and applied to real cases at the University of Bologna under the coordination of Prof Ezio Todini. There are certain requirements that need to be observed such as the maximum number of rescue points as well as the number of people involved. Initially, the candidate points are decided according to the ones proposed by the local civil protection services. We then calculate all possible routes from each candidate rescue point to all other points, generally using the concept of the "hyperpath", namely a set of paths each one of which may be optimal. The attributes of the road network are of fundamental importance, both for the calculation of the ideal distance and eventual delays due to the event measured in travel time units. In a second phase, the distances are used to decide the optimum rescue point positions using heuristics. This second part functions by "elimination". In the beginning, all points are considered rescue centres. During every interaction we wish to delete one point and calculate the impact it creates. In each case, we delete the point that creates less impact until we reach the number of rescue centres we wish to keep.