A Mathematical Model to Improve the Quality of Demand Responding in Emergency Medical Centers in a Humanitarian Supply chain

In Iran the rate of natural disasters, especially the earthquake, is very high, hence the humanitarian supply chain management before, during and after the disaster occurrence is very important. In other hand emergency medical centers are main part of this chain. Emergency medical centers with timely treatment of injuries reduced the irreversible damage of disaster. Therefore, the location of these centers has a major role in reducing the response time to affected people and the locating of these centers is very important. The main objective of this study is to determine the location of emergency medical centers in order to maximize the demand coverage and reduce the rescue time in a humanitarian supply chain. In order to solve the emergency medical centers location problem a mathematical model was presented, considering some conditions for the problem and sought to find the optimal locations for the establishment of these centers. To solve this problem, an innovative algorithm was presented in which two meta-heuristic algorithms were used. Then, 16 scenarios were solved by using the proposed algorithm. Due to the accuracy of the obtained responses and the high speed of the convergence of the proposed algorithm, it can be used in large and complex problems that cannot reach the exact answer in a reasonable time.