Economic homework

1 Disaster Recovery Problem

The Director of Civil Defense Agency has been ordered to draw up a disaster recovery plan for assigning casualties to hospitals in the event of a serious earthquake. For sim- plicity, we will assume that the casualties can be assumed to occur at four different zones of the city. The agency has run some statistical analysis and has estimated the number of casualties at each zone for a worst case scenario. The casualties may be transported to any one of the five hospitals in the city. The agency has also estimated average travel times from each zone to each hospital during an emergency. The travel times, hospi- tal capacities, and the expected number of casualties are summarized in Table 1. How should the victims be assigned to minimize the total time lost in transporting them to the hospitals?

Table 1: Emergency Preparedness Data

Location H1 H2 H3 H4 H5 Casualties Travel Times (min.)

North 25 15 6 10 20 400 South 20 15 4 17 12 300 East 17 5 18 10 20 200 West 10 15 8 10 5 150

Capacity 350 300 250 200 150

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