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Solving the Life Detector Routing Problem over a Street Network: A Multi-Start-based Approach

delete2026-04-01
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PRE
AI
L
Lu, Chung-Cheng *
C
Chien, Yu-Shyun
H
Hu, Shu-Hao
DOI:10.1007/s13177-026-00642-9delete
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Abstract

Abstract

En 中文
Life detectors were successfully used in the search-and-rescue actions after several major earthquakes around the world. To efficiently find buried victims after massive earthquakes in urban areas, emergency response agencies need to design the least-distance tour for life detectors to visit collapsed buildings and find trapped people. The life detector routing problem (LDRP) aims to find the least-distance tour for a life detector to scan a set of collapsed buildings in an urban street network. This study develops two algorithmic frameworks to solve large-scale problem instances of the LDRP, namely the double-loop-based method and the multi-start-based method. To evaluate the performance of these methods, three meta-heuristics are incorporated in the proposed frameworks, including simulated annealing, Tabu search, and iterated greedy algorithms. The algorithms are evaluated using test instances that are generated based on real-world urban street networks. The computational results show that the proposed frameworks are more effective than a classical two-stage heuristic for solving the test instances of the LDRP. The results also indicate that, with similar computational efforts, the multi-start-based method outperforms the double-loop-based method. Moreover, the average total distance for visiting all of the collapsed buildings decreases with the increase in the detection radius. The findings and the results provide a valuable reference to emergency response agencies in the search-and-rescue actions after massive earthquakes.
Keywords:
Disaster Operation Management
Life Detector
Heuristics
Close-enough Traveling Salesman Problem
Double-loop
Multi-start

Journal

I
International Journal of Intelligent Transportation Systems Research
IF:
1.5
Papers:
90
Citations:
0

Organization

N
N
national yang ming chiao tung university
Scholars:
2.8K
Papers: 1.2K
Citations: 0
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