Development of an Interval-Based Evacuation Management Model in Response to Nuclear-Power Plant Accident

Abstract

Nuclear-power-plant emergency management is very important, which can be used to avoid nuclear accident and radiation leak accident and the emergency action swiftly taken beyond the normal work procedure to mitigate the accident consequences. Evacuation management for large crowds after accidents involves a number of processes and factors with socio-economic and environmental implications. These processes and factors, as well as their interactions, are associated with a variety of uncertainties. In this study, an interval-based evacuation management (IBEM) model is developed in response to such challenges, based on interval-parameter linear programming (ILP) technique that can tackle uncertainties presented as interval values. The IBEM model is applied to a case study and then solved through an interactive algorithm that does not lead to more complicated intermediate submodels and has a relatively low computational requirement. Two scenarios are analyzed based on different policies of total capital considerations. A number of decision alternatives could be directly generated based on results from the IBEM model, which provide bases for in-depth analyses of tradeoffs among evacuation population, system cost, and constraint-violation risk.

Keywords: decision making, evacuation management, interval analysis, nuclear accident, optimization, uncertainty