Managing Debris Collection and Disposal Operations

碎片是由自然灾害或恐怖袭击等危险事件产生的废物。碎片清理工作分为三个阶段：（一）清除，包括在危险事件期间或之后立即开展的行动，目的是清除主要干道上的碎片，以便进入关键设施，并协助紧急行动;（二）收集，包括将碎片从灾区运到收集地点;（三）处置，包括将碎片运到最终处置场和选择处置方法（例如，填埋、减少、回收或再利用）。该奖项的研究目标是开发数学模型，以反映每个阶段与碎片有关的作业的重要特点沿着有效求解这些数学模型的方法。将通过考虑公平性（考虑到应用程序的公共影响性质）和稳健性（考虑到这些环境中的各种不确定性）来增强模型。最终目标是开发一个综合模型，同时考虑到所有三个阶段中决策问题之间的相互作用，这项研究的结果将有助于在危险事件的规划、反应和短期和长期恢复阶段开发碎片清除行动的决策支持工具。建立的决策支持工具将用于战术，业务和综合政策评估阶段的地方和联邦应急管理机构，如联邦应急管理局和USACE。这些工具将有助于评价资源可得性和确定优先次序的决定对碎片作业的费用和服务水平的影响，并最终将导致更快和更具成本效益的碎片管理作业。

Debris is the waste generated by a hazardous event such as a natural disaster or a terrorist attack. Debris operations are categorized into three phases: (i) Clearance which include operations performed during or right after a hazardous event with the goal of clearing the debris from major arteries to give access to critical facilities and to aid in emergency operations; (ii) Collection which include transporting the debris from the disaster area to collection sites; (iii) Disposal which include transporting the debris to the final disposal sites and choosing the disposal method (e.g., landfill, reduce, recycle, or reuse). The research objective of this award is to develop mathematical models that capture the important characteristics of the debris related operations in each stage along with methodologies for solving these mathematical models efficiently. The models will be enhanced by including considerations on fairness (given the public impact nature of the application) and robustness (given various types of uncertainty in these settings). The ultimate goal is the development of an integrated model that considers the interactions between the decision problems in all three phases simultaneously.The results of this research will facilitate the development of decision support tools for debris clearance operations during the planning, response, and short and long term recovery stages of a hazardous event. The decision support tools built will be used in tactical, operational and comprehensive policy evaluation phases by both local and federal emergency management agencies such as FEMA and USACE. These tools will aid in evaluating the impact of resource availability and prioritization decisions on the costs and service levels of debris operations and ultimately will result in faster and more cost effective debris management operation.