Sustainable Humanitarian Operations: Multi-Method Simulation for Large-Scale Evacuation

Bertha Maya Sopha, Athaya Islami Triasari and Lynette Cheah
Additional contact information
Bertha Maya Sopha: Industrial Engineering Program, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), Yogyakarta 55281, Indonesia
Athaya Islami Triasari: Industrial Engineering Program, Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering, Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), Yogyakarta 55281, Indonesia
Lynette Cheah: Engineering Systems and Design, Singapore University of Technology and Design (SUTD), Singapore 487372, Singapore

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 13, 1-19

Abstract: Integrating sustainability in humanitarian operations has been seen as a promising approach toward effective and long-term solutions. During disaster emergency management, the evacuation determines the risk of loss in a disaster. To better understand the effectiveness of the evacuation plan while considering the sustainability standpoint, this paper develops a multi-method simulation (MMS) approach to evaluate evacuation time, load balance of the shelters, and CO 2 emission. The MMS integrating Agent-Based Modeling (ABM) and Discrete-Event Simulation (DES) incorporates evacuation decision-making and evacuation processes. Comparative analysis shows that the MMS outperforms the use of ABM solely. The simulation results indicate over-utilization and imbalanced load among the shelters, implying a need to expand shelters’ capacity and to revisit the evacuation plan concerning the location of the assembly points and the shelters and the resource allocation. Evacuation behavior heading to the nearest assembly point instead of the designated assembly point based on the evacuation plan worsens the imbalanced load among the shelters and results in higher CO 2 emissions by 8%. The results demonstrate the necessity to include evacuation decision-making (social dimension) on top of the technical dimension and to adopt sustainable performance indicators in planning the evacuation sustainably. Avenues for future research are also discussed.

Keywords: sustainable humanitarian operations; multi-method simulation; large-scale evacuation; evacuation plan; volcano eruption (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/13/7488/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/13/7488/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:13:y:2021:i:13:p:7488-:d:588754

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().