Operations Research and Decisions | 2026
Authors: Dhungana R.C.; Gupta S.P.; Adhikari I.M.
DOI: 10.37190/ord/218948
Journal: Operations Research and Decisions
Year: 2026
Publisher: Wroclaw University of Science and Technology
Document Type: Article
Open Access: All Open Access; Gold Open Access; Green Open Access
Cited by: 0
The designing of evacuation strategies is the process of making decisions concerning to the objectives that are multiple and, in most cases, conflicting to each other. This research work demonstrates a comprehensive framework of evacuation optimization that integrates multi-objective network flow concepts. The model put forward is the one that determines in a joint manner the most advantageous locations of the facilities as well as the flow assignments to realize not only the evacuation that is efficient but also balanced. To elevate network performance, a cost-aware contraflow strategy is presented which, by considering the switching and traffic management costs, along with the increasing capacity, reverses the arcs that are unused. The inclusion of these genuine constraints in the model provides a means to evaluate the compromises that exist between efficiency, cost, and the feasibility of operations during disaster response. © 2026 Authors
facility placement; flow maximization; network flow; resource limitation; reversal cost