Location and Capacity Allocation Decisions to Mitigate the Impacts of Unexpected Man-Made Disasters in Delhi: A Goal Programming Approach

Disaster management has been a great concern for the people, government and industry. Disaster may be natural, technological and man-made. Man-made disaster is more challenging due to the involvement of a section of people who have their own intelligence. They also try to disrupt the required relief operation just after the disaster. Each year, a large number of people are killed in man-made disaster, which may be in the form of terrorist attack with bomb blasting and open gun firing, riot between two communities due to social and political dispute, etc. Each of these disasters claims the death of a large number of people every year in the world. In most of the cases, the disasters cannot be prevented due to intelligence failure and other reasons, but the post-disaster efforts to minimize the losses can be optimized. Delhi is the capital of India and one of the most sensitive places for the man-made disaster. Delhi is one of the hot spots for the terrorist attack, and political and social disturbances. In this study, goal programming is used to deploy the human force for control and relief operation. An approximate estimation of availability of police force, medical staff and firemen is used for finding the deployment of these forces at different location during the disaster. It may help the administration to control the situation rapidly by quick deployment of the existing human resources.