An Integrated Housing Design and Logistics Operations Modeling and Analysis Framework for Hurricane Relief

Clemson University, Clemson SC

Investigators

Abstract

This Disaster Resilience Research Grants (DRRG) project contributes to the advancement of national health, prosperity and welfare by creating new knowledge on disaster recovery housing design and logistics planning. A critical need following a major hurricane event is to provide housing solutions for the affected population. The main objective of this project is to create an integrated modeling and analysis framework for disaster housing designs and logistics planning, including evaluating and enhancing their effectiveness in resilient hurricane response and recovery. In particular, this framework will integrate the physical resilience of disaster housing, the system resilience of the disaster housing supply chain and logistics network, and the operational resilience of robust and adaptive logistics operations under various hurricane scenarios. A host of disaster housing logistics decision support tools and novel disaster housing architectural designs will be developed to reduce suffering, lower manufacturing and logistics costs, and foster a long-term collaboration between disaster resilience researchers and emergency management agencies. A key goal is to support recovery housing scenarios that get people back into their home neighborhoods in the quickest possible timeframe. This project draws on converging research efforts from multiple disciplines including architectural design for disaster housing, natural hazard and fragility analysis, and disaster relief logistics network design and operations planning. Novel stochastic optimization models and solution methodologies will improve disaster housing logistics network design and operational policy, leveraging weather forecast data and fragility analysis for hurricane hazards. These tools offer a quantitative approach for analyzing how various disaster housing solutions can be deployed to achieve lower social and logistics costs and to inform new disaster housing architectural design iterations by various cost/benefit tradeoff analyses of their logistics and socioeconomic attributes. The overall project outcome will improve the housing component of disaster relief. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.