Development of a Heuristic Method Based on Genetic Algorithm for Optimizing Allocation of Earthquake Injured to Medical Centers

Few researches have ever been done in allocation of demand points with a certain size services required to facility centers with a limited capacity services. Most proposed solutions for these issues are so complicated; therefore, some heuristic methods have been developed to deal with this subject based on the problem’s conditions. Although in many allocation problems a major part of information and analysis is spatial, operational research and science management researchers have paid a little attention to this fact. Allocation of injuries to medical centers is one of vital tasks in earthquake disaster management. Developing and using an optimized method to allocate injuries to medical centers, definitely decreases the rescue time and could highly mitigate the number of human losses. In this paper, we created a heuristic method based on genetic algorithm and geospatial information system to optimize earthquake injurie's allocation to medical centers. To assess the qualities of proposed algorithm, two different scenarios about the numbers and spatial distribution of earthquake injuries have been analyzed in the study area. The effect of initial population size parameter of genetic algorithm in solving the problem was evaluated as well. The results of this study showed that developed framework with a proper initial population size could be an appropriate solution for optimizing these types of allocation problems.