Managing Debris Collection and Disposal Operations

碎片是指自然灾害或恐怖袭击等危险事件产生的废物。碎片作业分为三个阶段：(1)清理，包括在危险事件发生期间或之后立即进行的作业，目的是清理主要干线上的碎片，以便进入关键设施并协助紧急行动；(2)收集，包括将碎片从灾区运送到收集点；(3)处置，包括将碎片运送到最终处置地点，并选择处置方法(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，以捕捉每个阶段与碎片有关的作业的重要特征，以及有效解决这些数学模型的方法。考虑到公平性(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)，这些模型将得到加强。最终目标是开发一个综合模型，同时考虑所有三个阶段决策问题之间的相互作用。本研究的结果将有助于开发危险事件规划、响应以及短期和长期恢复阶段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，由地方和联邦应急管理机构，如联邦应急管理局和美国国家环境保护局使用。这些工具将有助于评估资源可获得性和确定优先次序的决定对碎片作业费用和服务水平的影响，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.