Coordinating Spontaneous Volunteers in the Aftermath of Natural Disasters: Development and Computational Evaluation of Heuristic Methods

In the aftermath of natural disasters, the timely coordination of spon- taneous volunteers is crucial for minimising harm and preventing casualties. How- ever, research into decision support methodologies and systems for coordinating volunteers is scarce. Building on previous work in this area, we propose combin- ing heuristic and exact procedures. Based on real-world data from a flood scenario in Halle (Saale, Germany) in 2018, we propose and computationally evaluate different combinations. Our results show that using a combination of a heuristic and a MILP solver allows for the efficient computation of effective solutions for up to 500 volunteers. Our results also show that the most suitable mode depends on the size of the problem in terms of the number of volunteers.