Capacitated Maximal Covering Location Allocation Problem During Flood Disaster

Every year, Malaysia is hit by seasonal floods that forces thousands of evacuees to be transferred to relief centers. In this paper, we propose the use of an optimization model to find the appropriate number of temporary relief centers as well as the size of the facility. The objectives are to maximize the number of flood victims that can be relocated to a relief center within a fixed distance while ensuring that the relief center has enough capacity to cater for the victim. In this study, we used MCLP and capacitated MCLP (CMCLP) that are solved using Excel Solver. The MCLP involves locating a fixed number of relief centers to cover the maximum number of flood victims in demand zones. The results indicate that MCLP showed no significant problem in allocating the flood victims to the relief centers as the facilities are readily available. Meanwhile the capacitated MCLP (CMCLP) reveals how the limited capacity can affect the number of flood victims that can be relocated. An actual case study based on the scenario of flood victim evacuation from their homes during a severe flood in Kuantan 2013 was analysed.