Distribution of emergency medical supplies in cities under major public health emergency

To improve the emergency rescue efficiency of medical supplies and reduce the casualties and economic losses in cities under the major public health emergency, based on the characteristics analyses of major public health emergencies and emergency logistics, the demand urgency was taken as the influencing factor of distribution. The evaluation index system for medical supplies demand points was proposed with the evaluation indexes of population within jurisdictions, confirmed and suspected cases of infection, scale of medical supplies demand point, number of medical staff and gap rate of medical supplies. According to the characteristics of emergency logistics of medical supplies, the time window parameters of medical supplies distribution were adjusted. The total distribution cost function composed of driving cost, penalty cost of distribution delay and subsidy without distribution delay was established. Considering the constraints of vehicle load, distribution time window, and demand urgency of medical supplies, a dual objective of priority distribution for demand points with the minimum total distribution cost and high demand urgency was constructed to optimize the distribution path of medical supplies. Relying on the software platforms of SPSS, Yaahp and MATLAB, and combining with examples, the analytic hierarchy process and genetic algorithm were used to solve the optimization models of emergency logistics distribution path of medical supplies with and without the consideration of demand urgency. Research result shows that under the major public health emergency, the optimal distribution path considering the demand urgency not only gives priority to the medical supplies demand points with higher demand urgency, but also reduces the total distribution cost by 5.8%, comparing with the distribution path without the consideration of demand urgency. The introduction of demand urgency can greatly reduce the blindness of scheduling. The dual objective optimization model restrained by the conditions of vehicle load, distribution time window and demand urgency of medical supplies can effectively improve the emergency rescue efficiency and reduce unnecessary scheduling costs. 7 tabs, 3 figs, 34 refs. © 2020, Editorial Department of Journal of Traffic and Transportation Engineering. All right reserved.