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The purpose of this paper is to study and review some major impacts of the disasters during the past 105 years and develop a new theoretical classification of disasters. Design/methodology/approach– A detailed study of disasters in the world during the period (1900‐2005) has been obtained from the recent published sources. In that period more than 40 lessons have been reported based on statistical data analysis of disasters. Furthermore, a two‐dimensional probability density function is developed to categorize the different types of disasters. This paper studies and reviews some major impacts of disasters during the past 105 years and summarizes some major lessons for the future.... 

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to study and review some major impacts of the disasters during the past 105 years and develop a new theoretical classification of disasters. Design/methodology/approach - A detailed study of disasters in the world during the period (1900-2005) has been obtained from the recent published sources. In that period more than 40 lessons have been reported based on statistical data analysis of disasters. Furthermore, a two-dimensional probability density function is developed to categorize the different types of disasters. This paper studies and reviews some major impacts of disasters during the past 105 years and summarizes some major lessons for the future.... 

A disaster is an adverse event resulting from natural processes of the Earth or sometimes from terrorist attacks. Since the concept of disaster resilience has become prominent, research and practice for making the cities resilient play an important role in urban management. Cities are composed of a variety of structures and providing the structural resiliency can protect them. Resilient structures are composed of a number of ideal performance criteria, which based on analysis, experiment, and past experience, are capable to withstand the required level of stress and deformation. In addition, durability, fire resistance, and other capabilities, such as being environmentally friendly with no... 

Natural earthquake disasters are unprecedented incidents which take many lives as a consequence and cause major damages to lifeline infrastructures. Various agencies in a country are responsible for reducing such adverse impacts within specific budgets. These responsibilities range from before to after the incident, targeting one of the main phases of disaster management (mitigation, preparedness, and response). Use of OR in disaster management and coordination of its phases has been mostly ignored and highly recommended in former reviews. This paper presents a formulation to coordinate three main agencies and proposes a heuristic approach to solve the different introduced sub-problems. The... 

We formulate an integrated mathematical model for distribution of the injured on a three-type transportation network with destroyable independent links and with actual travel times considering two different groups of the injured. The aim is to find the temporary locations for aid stations and their capacities, the percentage of the injured with various severities allocated to each station and to different routes and the number of vehicles so that the total relief time is minimized. For this, we present a new approach, called circle-based approach, in which the effects of the disaster are considered as a number of concentric circular regions. The original problem is formulated as an integer... 

In recent years, the number and severity of natural disasters occurring in various regions of the world have increased dramatically incurring heavy financial and human losses. Therefore, decision-makers have been concerned with ways of providing relief to reduce the losses. Here, we present a multi-objective bi-level model for disaster location-routing problem that provides the needed supplies through multiple suppliers, considering the supply risk. Moreover, to reduce the risk and increase efficiency, special attention is given to people's help for supplying goods having high priority and low risk. At the first level of the model, the cost and time objectives are considered, and at the... 

The efficient planning of search and rescue (SAR) operations is highly impactful in the disaster response phase, which offers a limited time window with a declining chance for saving trapped people. The present paper introduces a new robust decision support framework for planning SAR resource deployment in post-disaster districts. A two-stage decomposition approach is applied to formulate the problem as iterative interrelated stages of mixed-integer programming (MIP) models. The first stage presents a robust multi-period allocation model for maximizing fair and effective demand coverage in the affected districts during the entire planning horizon. It takes into account the time-sensitiveness... 

The efficient planning of search and rescue (SAR) operations is highly impactful in the disaster response phase, which offers a limited time window with a declining chance for saving trapped people. The present paper introduces a new robust decision support framework for planning SAR resource deployment in post-disaster districts. A two-stage decomposition approach is applied to formulate the problem as iterative interrelated stages of mixed-integer programming (MIP) models. The first stage presents a robust multi-period allocation model for maximizing fair and effective demand coverage in the affected districts during the entire planning horizon. It takes into account the time-sensitiveness... 

Growing widespread outages in power systems caused by natural disasters have highlighted the necessity of applying defensive approaches with the goal of prompt service restoration. In this context, this paper proposes a stochastic model with the goal of optimally using proactive operational actions before the upcoming disturbance hits. The actions considered in this study include network reconfiguration and crew prepositioning. To take the effective actions, the model simulates probable damages caused by the events via a set of scenarios generated by Monte Carlo simulation method. The proposed model aims at minimizing the expected load curtailment caused by the event over the scenarios. To... 

Growing widespread outages in power systems caused by natural disasters have highlighted the necessity of applying defensive approaches with the goal of prompt service restoration. In this context, this paper proposes a stochastic model with the goal of optimally using proactive operational actions before the upcoming disturbance hits. The actions considered in this study include network reconfiguration and crew prepositioning. To take the effective actions, the model simulates probable damages caused by the events via a set of scenarios generated by Monte Carlo simulation method. The proposed model aims at minimizing the expected load curtailment caused by the event over the scenarios. To... 

The great potential of natural and unnatural events in many countries like Iran along with the strategic role of transportation networks in a country's economic, disaster management in Iran's transportation network, especially in its capital, Tehran, has a great importance. Also transportation networks play an important role in various stages of response to disasters, such as evacuation, search and rescue, and reconstruction missions. Hence, special attention must be paid to transportation networks in any disaster management system. Reliability measures are critical in judging the performance of a transportation system and it is very important to evaluate the performance of the network after... 

This article proposes a new three-stage stochastic framework for dealing with predictable two-phase natural disasters in distribution systems. This framework is a multiobjective optimization, in which the amount of curtailed energy, the number of switching actions, and the vulnerability of operational components are selected as the main criteria for decision-making process. The optimization problem is formulated in the form of a stochastic mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problem. In this article, a windstorm event followed by flooding is analyzed as a two-phase natural disaster. In this regard, the uncertainties associated with gust-wind speed, floodwater depths, and load demands are... 

Distribution system reconfiguration is an effective solution to reduce the consequences of a disaster through transferring loads to another feeder via automatic switches. Meanwhile, an optimal sequence of damage components repairments provides the operator with the opportunity to utilize components that play a critical role in restoring loads sooner. Motivated by the rise in penetration of renewable distributed generators in modern distribution systems, this paper aims to develop a robust reconfiguration and crew routing co-optimization method to cope with renewable and demand uncertainties while recovering from a disaster. The method optimizes the grid recovery process for the worst... 

Optimal placement of switches can play a key role in providing resilience to power distribution systems against major faults caused by natural disasters. This study presents a resilience-based framework for optimal switch placement in distribution systems being consistent with the expansion plans of distributed generation units. At first, the impact of hurricanes on distribution system components is modelled using the geographic information system of distribution grid and the strength of components against extreme weather-related events. Then, a new resiliency index is proposed to assess the resilience of distribution grids. This index is involved in a mathematical model of the switch... 

Hardening and operational measures in electrical distribution systems (EDSs) aim at improving the resilience of EDS in case of natural disasters. This paper proposes a novel two-stage framework for establishing optimal restoration paths for supplying critical loads (CLs) in the aftermath of a natural disaster that will improve the resilience of EDSs. To this end, in the first stage, an algorithm is introduced to find all possible candidate paths between available distributed energy resources (DERs) and CLs, the output of which is applied to the second stage, as the inputs. Subsequently, in the second stage, the problem of finding the optimal restoration paths is modeled as a mixed integer... 

Power systems are stretched across thousands of miles of diverse territories, often in remote locations, to generate and transfer the energy to geographically dispersed customers. The system is therefore subjected to a wide range of natural hazards which could potentially damage critical system components and cause interruption of electricity supply in some areas. To improve system resilience against natural hazards, management frameworks are required to identify hazardous areas and prioritize reinforcement activities in order to take the most out of the limited resources.Landslide is a natural disaster that involves the breakup and downhill flow of rock, mud, water, and anything caught in...