Determining Optimal Evacuation Decision Policies For Disasters
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Authors
Crews, Jason C.
Subjects
Advisors
Craparo, Emily M.
Date of Issue
2012-03
Date
Mar-12
Publisher
Monterey, California. Naval Postgraduate School
Language
Abstract
Decision making in the face of uncertainty is a difficult task, and this is exacerbated when the decision is irreversible, it
involves a near-term deadline, and/or the cost of a bad decision is high. Deciding whether to stay or evacuate from an
impending natural disaster is difficult for all of these reasons. This thesis explores the evacuation decision as a Markov
decision problem. We develop a generic disaster model to explore the tensions and tradeoffs in the decision to evacuate and
use a dynamic programming algorithm to determine optimal decision policies for the decision maker. We explore how these
policies are affected by evacuation costs as well as disaster uncertainty.
Type
Thesis
Description
Series/Report No
Department
Operations Research
Organization
Identifiers
NPS Report Number
Sponsors
Funder
Format
Citation
Distribution Statement
Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.