A Location Optimization Approach to Refugee Resettlement Decision-Making

Whether due to customary or emerging causes, the growing refugee population precipitates a variety of issues globally. Resettlement of refugees is a multi-disciplinary issue that should be regarded carefully. Perceiving refugee resettlement as a layered problem, the purpose of this study is to help decision-makers with arduous resettlement planning by proposing a multicriteria facility location and allocation problem that accounts for physical capacities of the host cities, matching-opening dependencies of resettlement sites, and matching feasibility. We focus on the significant objectives of the resettlement process: prioritization and the overall success of the resettlement process based on the socio-cultural differences to improve social resilience of the host cities along with the physical distances and travel difficulties between origin and host locations. As a result, the model provides, Pareto-optimal solutions on the timing and amount of the resettlement. The results show that it would be a naive approach to focus solely on maximization of the resettled refugees and considering it to be the only reason for resettlement. The trade-offs among the objectives revealed by the model show that a multiobjective approach is critical to create realistic policies.