A DECISION PROCESS FOR SURFACE MEDICAL EVACUATION ROUTING USING ONLINE OPTIMIZATION

Abstract

Our adversaries are enhancing their capabilities, threatening to complicate the execution of medical evacuation operations, necessitating the development of innovative solutions. Optimizing medical evacuation routing is essential to maintaining operational readiness to provide timely medical care in an area where access and mobility are increasingly challenged. Previous work considered one evacuation ship using online optimization. However, there is currently no solution if multiple evacuation ships require limited communications and synchronization. What happens when there is a requirement for multiple evacuation ships? They will not be able to communicate, but they will still need to be efficient and able to synchronize. Inefficient use of evacuation ships can mean delays or missed evacuations, leading to increased severity of injuries or death. To solve this problem, we start with previous models and add decentralized vehicle routing and synchronization. This creates an optimal route for multiple evacuation ships that avoid the adversary, collect the optimal number of evacuees, synchronize pickups, and make it to the end location in time.