Mobile phone tower location for survival after natural disasters

This paper discusses the location or strengthening of cell phone towers so as to maximize service coverage and minimize the loss of communications if a natural disaster happens. This paper demonstrates that, under a high likelihood of destruction of antennas (towers), the customary method of maximizing coverage provides poor solutions as compared to the proposed method. In addition to the maximization of service coverage, the objectives of our model include the minimization of expected and worst-case losses. The model is applied to a region in the south of Chile that was stricken by one of the most destructive earthquakes registered in history. Computational results are provided for a variety of scenarios.

► We select a subset of existing cell-phone towers to be fortified for survival after natural disasters.
► Service loss is minimized for worst-case failure of one of the selected towers.
► A real case in Chile post-2010-earthquake is analyzed.
► Worst-case models perform better than coverage models.