An integer model for optimizing dynamic allocation of medical supplies during the COVID-19
摘要
Infectious disease outbreaks have occurred multiple times in the past few decades and are likely to occur in the future. In light of potential emergencies, a prompt response is of primary concern for decision-makers. In emergency responses, accurately characterizing the spread of the epidemic and allocating emergency budget resources are crucial for epidemic prevention and control. Therefore, we propose an infectious disease-logistics optimization model to determine the quantity and supply routes of medical materials allocated per cycle to control the outbreak of infectious diseases. This model considers the interaction between the allocation of emergency medical materials and the spread of the epidemic. The dynamics of infection and recovery are contingent upon the availability of medical materials, and the quantities of various population groups shape the material demand in subsequent cycles. The model is formulated as an integer programming model, and we have developed an improved dynamic programming-Gurobi algorithm to solve it. We use the COVID-19 outbreak data from Wuhan, Hubei Province in 2020 to test the performance of the proposed algorithm and explore the characteristics of the model. The results indicate that the changes in different population groups during the epidemic are significantly influenced by the allocation of emergency materials. Additionally, there is a threshold effect for the quantity of emergency medical materials. Beyond the threshold, increasing the quantity of emergency materials does not have a significant impact on epidemic control.