D-Optimal Orienteering for Post-Earthquake Reconnaissance Planning

Routing a Vehicle to Collect Data After an Earthquake In the immediate aftermath of a major earthquake, it is crucial to quickly and accurately assess structural damage throughout the region. It is especially important to identify buildings that have become unsafe in order to prioritize evacuation efforts. Only a very small number of building inspections can be feasibly performed in a narrow time frame; however, their results can then be combined with other data sources to predict damage at other locations that were not inspected. In “D-Optimal Orienteering for Postearthquake Reconnaissance Planning,” Wang, Xie, Ryzhov, Marković, and Ou present a novel nonlinear integer program that combines vehicle routing with a statistical objective, the goal being to maximize data quality. An exact method based on row and column generation is developed to solve problems with up to 200 buildings. The approach is validated in a realistic case study using real-world building data obtained from a state-of-the-art earthquake simulator.