Emergency material location-allocation planning using a risk-based integration methodology for river chemical spills

It is critical for emergency material preparedness in the pre-accident phase to provide location-allocation planning and improve rescue capacity in an effective emergency response time due to increasing frequency of river chemical spills. In this study, an effective two-stage evaluation and selection framework is developed integrating fuzzy multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) method and multi-objective optimization model to obtain the optimal emergency material location-allocation (EMLA) scheme for coping with river chemical spills. In the evaluation stage, the emergency material warehouse alternatives are evaluated by a fuzzy TOPSIS method based on environmental risk assessment. In the selection stage, the EMLA optimization scheme is identified by a multi-objective optimization model to allocate emergency materials for all the risk sources in a time-effective manner. The two-stage evaluation and selection framework is then applied in Jiangsu province, China. The EMLA optimization scheme finally selects the best five emergency material warehouses (WZ1, WZ 4, WZ 5, WZ 18, and WZ 25) for Jiangsu province with the relative closeness 0.6014, 0.4676, 0.5179, 0.3360, and 0.2935, respectively. The EMLA results demonstrate that the developed framework could obtain EMLA optimization scheme with the objective of minimum emergency rescue points and maximum integrative rescue abilities and provide all the risk resources emergency materials in a quick response for river chemical spills in the pre-accident phase.