The RESPOND-OR project is led by Lancaster University, Centre for Transport and Logistics (CENTRAL), in partnership with Universitas Indonesia, Universitas Gadjah Mada and the University of Khartoum. An Advisory Committee of stakeholders from government and non-government organizations in Indonesia and Sudan has been established to ensure the alignment of the scientific activities, project results and deliverables to the stakeholders’ needs.

Lancaster University

At Lancaster, the RESPOND-OR project will be undertaken by the Centre for Transport and Logistics (CENTRAL), a research centre within Lancaster University Management School. The researchers in CENTRAL who are contributing to RESPOND-OR are:

• Professor Konstantinos G. Zografos (Principal Investigator)
• Professor Kevin Glazebrook (Co-Investigator)
• Professor Juliana Sutanto (Co-Investigator)
• Dr Ahmed Kheiri (Co-Investigator)

Universitas Indonesia (UI)

At Universitas Indonesia (UI), the RESPOND-OR project will be undertaken by the Faculty of Computer Science and the Department of Industrial Engineering. The RESPOND-OR collaborators from UI are:

• Professor Heru Suhartanto (Co-Investigator), Faculty of Computer Science
• Dr Akhmad Hidayatno (Co-Investigator), System Engineering, Modelling, and Simulation Lab in the Department of Industrial Engineering
• Dr Komarudin (Co-Investigator), Department of Industrial Engineering

Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM)

At Universitas Gadjah Mada (UGM), the RESPOND-OR project will be undertaken by the Supply Chain Engineering and Logistics lab at the Department of Industrial Engineering. The RESPOND-OR collaborator from the lab is:

Dr Bertha Maya Sopha (Co-Investigator), Department of Industrial Engineering

University of Khartoum

At the University of Khartoum (UofK), the RESPOND-OR project will be undertaken by the Faculty of Mathematical Sciences and the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering. The RESPOND-OR collaborators from UofK are:

Dr Hisham Abushama: (Co-Investigator), Faculty of Mathematical Sciences

Dr Hiba Mohammed Ali (Co-Investigator), Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department

Advisory Board Members in Indonesia

• Bernardus Wisnu Widjaja, MSc. is the Deputy Chief for Systems and Strategy in the National Disaster Management Authority of the Republic of Indonesia (BNPB). Previously he was the Deputy Chief for Prevention and Preparedness.
• Bambang Surya Putra, M.Com is the Head of Disaster Response at BNPB. Previously he was the Deputy Director for Early Warning and Disaster Preparedness in BNPB. He is the lead researcher at BNPB, coordinating research collaborations between academics and industry with BNPB and ensuring that the research done is aligned with BNPB’s needs.
• Drs. Biswara Yuswantana, M.Si is the Head of Disaster Management Agency of Yogyakarta Special Region (BPBP DIY). He makes key operational decisions in Yogyakarta with respect to evacuation route, shelter planning, prepositioning, and logistic distribution.
• Dear Nugra Bestari handles the Communication and Partnership of Humanitarian Forum Indonesia (HFI). She conducts training for responders and disaster-prone community members. She was the technical officer of ASEAN Standardization and Certification of Experts in Disaster Management (ASCEND).
• Benny Usdianto is the Chief of RedR Indonesia. He has more than 19 years of experience in disaster management and emergency responses across several national and international organisations, including Oxfam UK, German Technical Cooperation Agency (GTZ), and FGC ANZDEC, a New Zealand-based company specialising in agricultural development and natural resources management.

Advisory Board Members in Sudan

• Professor Siddig Awadalla is an expert in floods and health disasters in National Ribat University. He was the Head of Scientific Office at Sudanese Meteorological Society. He acted as a group leader and co-ordinator of several international joint projects on Environmental Degradation and related areas.
• Dr Salih Hamad Hamid is the Director of Nile Water Directorate at the Ministry of Water Resources, Irrigation and Electricity in Sudan. He has extensive experience in Water Resources Modelling and Decision Support Systems.
• Azeb Mersha is Water Resource Modeller in Nile Basin Initiative (NBI) with extensive experience in water resource and hydrology, including water resource modelling, hydrological analysis, stormwater design and water resource planning.
• Anwar Mohammed Ali is a Colonel Officer working at Civil Defense. He leads many rescue and operation missions during disasters and emergencies. He has been chosen to participate in many national safety and disaster management committees.

The research activities that will be undertaken involve:

• The development of innovative mathematical models for optimizing disaster preparedness and response interventions. The proposed models will capture the interaction between strategic, tactical, and operational decisions, and will incorporate the stochastic and dynamic characteristics inherent in real-world disaster preparedness and response settings.
• The development of fast and efficient hyper-heuristic algorithms for addressing the resulting large-scale disaster preparedness and response models, taking into account the limited time available to make and update disaster response decisions.
• The development of efficient data management and visualization methods for dealing with diverse sources of data coming from different organizations and applications, taking into account the different update rates of the data and the need to provide a user-friendly way for visualizing them.
• The validation of the models and algorithms using real-world instances with stakeholders from Indonesia and Sudan.
• The development of a sustainable international partnership between academia and emergency preparedness and response organizations (including governmental agencies and NGOs) for addressing problems contributing to sustainable socio-economic development.

These research activities are organised in six work packages (WPs). A key feature of the work packages is the active and continuous engagement of the users of the research results (stakeholder partners).

• WP1: Modelling and Data Requirements
• WP2: Data Management and Visualisation
• WP3: Development of Mathematical Models
• WP4: Development and Implementation of Algorithms
• WP5: Validation
• WP6: Pilot Implementation

1. Publications

Gultom, Y., Haryanto, T., Suhartanto, H. (2021) “Route Subnetwork Generation using OpenStreetMap Data for Emergency Response Problem Modeling in Indonesia”, Proceedings of the 2021 International Conference on Advanced Computer Science and Information Systems (ICACSIS), IEEE, pp. 1-6, doi: 10.1109/ICACSIS53237.2021.9631340.

Abstract: Route subnetwork generation is useful in modelling disaster emergency response operation problems such as evacuation, aid distribution, and personnel scheduling. Through this paper, we propose an end-to-end approach of generating a subnetwork based on a list of points of interest (villages, shelters, depots, etc) and publicly available data using a combination of open source tools. Our final product is an open-source software published in a public code repository. We also present some experiments for three emergency response operations in Indonesia: the Yogyakarta earthquake (2020), Jakarta flood (2013), and Lombok earthquake (2018). Subnetwork generation with a multicore CPU was able to produce an average speedup of 1.67 times for the three disaster locations. For further research, the use of the Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) can be considered to accelerate the subnetwork generation process.

2. Technical Reports

Pirogov A, Zografos KG, Sutanto J, Kheiri A. (2022). Modeling and Solving the assisted evacuation problem for natural disasters: A multi-objective programming approach. Technical report for the RESilient Emergency Preparedness for Natural Disaster Response through Operational Research (RESPOND-OR) project. United Kingdom: Lancaster University Management School, Centre for Transport and Logistics (CENTRAL).

Tarhan I, Zografos KG, Sutanto J, Kheiri A, Suhartanto H. (2022). Multi-objective rolling horizon personnel routing and scheduling approach for natural disasters. Technical report for the RESilient Emergency Preparedness for Natural Disaster Response through Operational Research (RESPOND-OR) project. United Kingdom: Lancaster University Management School, Centre for Transport and Logistics (CENTRAL).

Tarhan I, Zografos KG, Sutanto J, Kheiri A. (2022). Dynamic Personnel Routing and Scheduling for natural disasters Technical report for the RESilient Emergency Preparedness for Natural Disaster Response through Operational Research (RESPOND-OR) project. United Kingdom: Lancaster University Management School, Centre for Transport and Logistics (CENTRAL).

Abushama H, M. Ali HHS, Elbadawi K, Salih S. (2022). Risk Estimation and Network Generation Technical report for the RESilient Emergency Preparedness for Natural Disaster Response through Operational Research (RESPOND-OR) project. Sudan: University of Khartoum.

Abushama H, M. Ali HHS, Elbadawi K, Khalid S, Tarig M. (2022). Security Forces Rostering Problem Sudan: University of Khartoum. Technical report for the RESilient Emergency Preparedness for Natural Disaster Response through Operational Research (RESPOND-OR) project.

3. Manuals

Sopha B M, Arini H M, Sakti S (2022). Manual for Building Multi-Method Simulation for Jakarta Flood Evacuation. Software manual for the RESilient Emergency Preparedness for Natural Disaster Response through Operational Research (RESPOND-OR) project. Indonesia: Universitas Gadjah Mada.

Suhartanto H, Haryanto T, Fathurahman M, Salim A (2022). Decision Support System (DSS) User Manual. Software manual for the RESilient Emergency Preparedness for Natural Disaster Response through Operational Research (RESPOND-OR) project. Indonesia: Universitas Indonesia.

4. Webtool - Application

RESPOND-OR Decision Support System. (2022)

The RESPOND-OR Decision Support System (DSS) aims to assist the disaster response agencies in Indonesia in making two disaster response decisions: i) assisted evacuation, and ii) personnel routing and scheduling. Accordingly, the DSS has two main modules: i) Assisted Evacuation Planning (AEP), and ii) Personnel Routing and Scheduling (PRS). The AEP and PRS modules utilize the network data generated by the system in providing solutions/recommendations for a defined disaster location.

The DSS is available upon request through this link: DSS Manual.