A scenario planning approach for propositioning rescue centers for urban waterlog disasters

• A system specification for urban waterlog disasters is developed.
• A two-stage stochastic programming model is formulated.
• The economic cost and loss, and environmental and casualty risks are considered.
• The urban waterlog disasters in Pudong District of Shanghai, China is examined.

An urban waterlog disaster can produce severe results, such as residents’ property loss, environmental damages and pollution, and even casualties. This paper presents a system specification for urban waterlog disasters according to the analysis of urban waterlog disaster risks. Then, a two-stage stochastic mixed-integer programming model is formulated. The model minimizes the total logistics cost, and risk-induced penalties. Moreover, a deterministic counterpart of the stochastic model is proposed to study the expected value of perfect information. The multi-attribute utility theory is used to build assessment functions that assess the utility of the rescue system and the degree contributed to disaster relief for each rescue center. Finally, a real example of rescue logistics is examined for the urban waterlog disasters in Pudong District of Shanghai, China. Using the proposed model, two main results can be obtained. First, the expected value of perfect information experiment reveals that an additional ¥45,005 logistics cost and an additional ¥2417 risk-induced penalties can be incurred due to the presence of uncertainty. Second, as the weight of risk-induced penalty increases from 0.1 to 0.9, the logistics cost is increased by 41.21%, which thus contributes to a decrease of risk-induced penalty by 97.44%. Some managerial implications are discussed based on the numerical studies.