Managing Debris Collection and Disposal Operations

Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta GA

Investigators

Abstract

Debris is the waste generated by a hazardous event such as a natural disaster or a terrorist attack. Debris operations are categorized into three phases: (i) Clearance which include operations performed during or right after a hazardous event with the goal of clearing the debris from major arteries to give access to critical facilities and to aid in emergency operations; (ii) Collection which include transporting the debris from the disaster area to collection sites; (iii) Disposal which include transporting the debris to the final disposal sites and choosing the disposal method (e.g., landfill, reduce, recycle, or reuse). The research objective of this award is to develop mathematical models that capture the important characteristics of the debris related operations in each stage along with methodologies for solving these mathematical models efficiently. The models will be enhanced by including considerations on fairness (given the public impact nature of the application) and robustness (given various types of uncertainty in these settings). The ultimate goal is the development of an integrated model that considers the interactions between the decision problems in all three phases simultaneously. The results of this research will facilitate the development of decision support tools for debris clearance operations during the planning, response, and short and long term recovery stages of a hazardous event. The decision support tools built will be used in tactical, operational and comprehensive policy evaluation phases by both local and federal emergency management agencies such as FEMA and USACE. These tools will aid in evaluating the impact of resource availability and prioritization decisions on the costs and service levels of debris operations and ultimately will result in faster and more cost effective debris management operation.