On spatial layout planning of regional emergency logistics center

Under serious emergencies, due to the shortage of emergency logistics system planning, the functions of procurement, transportation, storage, allocation, distribution and recovery of emergency materials are scattered in different departments, regions and enterprises. This causes problems such as blocked transportation channels and unsmooth distribution of emergency materials. By aiming at the overall planning of emergency logistics center before the disaster, an integrated transportation network combining highway, high-speed railway and air routes was constructed, and the integrated transportation network was divided into communities by using complex network theory to find out the city communities with short distances in the region. The shortest distances from each city to other cities in the community were obtained by the Floyd algorithm, and the alternative cities of emergency logistics center were selected on this distance. According to the location theory, the evaluation index was constructed including whether there is an airport, transportation distance, per capita GDP, urban area, highway connection degree, railway connection degree and national logistics hub. The entropy weight TOPSIS method was used to comprehensively evaluate the alternative cities and select the most suitable city as the emergency logistics center within each community. The Yangtze River Delta region was taken as an example, where the cities were divided into four communities with 8～12 cities in each community and four emergency logistics centers of Nanjing, Suzhou, Ningbo and Xuzhou and their respective coverage areas were determined. Considering the location of emergency logistics center from the perspective of pre-disaster planning was conducive to improving the reliability and timeliness of emergency materials transportation after disasters. Meanwhile, focusing on the availability of data avoided too many assumptions, which was more practical, simple and effective for calculation. The research findings can provide decision support for the spatial layout planning of regional emergency logistics center and the optimization of logistics network, and it is of great significance to enhance the regional emergency support capability. © 2022, Central South University Press. All rights reserved.