Planning Emergency Shelters for Urban Disasters: A Multi-Level Location–Allocation Modeling Approach

Yijun Shi, Guofang Zhai, Lihua Xu, Quan Zhu and Jinyang Deng
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Yijun Shi: School of Landscape Architecture, Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou 311300, China
Guofang Zhai: School of Architecture and Urban Planning, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China
Lihua Xu: School of Landscape Architecture, Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou 311300, China
Quan Zhu: School of Landscape Architecture, Zhejiang A&F University, Hangzhou 311300, China
Jinyang Deng: School of Natural Resources, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV 26506, USA

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 16, 1-19

Abstract: In recent years, cities are threatened by various natural hazards. Planning emergency shelters in advance is an effective approach to reducing the damage caused by disasters and ensuring the safety of residents. Thus, providing the optimal layout of urban emergency shelters is an important stage of disaster management and an act of humanitarian logistics. In order to study the optimal layout of emergency shelters in small mountain cities, this paper constructs multi-level location models for different grades of emergency shelters so as to minimize the travel and construction costs and maximize the coverage rate. Specifically, the actual service of emergency shelters is determined using Geographic Information System (GIS) software and Weighted Voronoi Diagram (WVD) models under the limitation of site capacity, and the space layout is adjusted through combining the actual urban land with the construction position. In this paper, the Jianchuan county seat at Yunnan Province, China, was considered as a case study to illustrate the models of emergency shelters in which the feasibility of the presented models is verified. The proposed research methods and models have provided theoretical basis and a benchmark for the optimal layout of emergency shelters in other small mountain cities.

Keywords: Emergency shelters; multi-level location models; services scope; small mountain city (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

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