A FTA-based method for risk decision-making in emergency response

Yang Liu; Zhi-Ping Fan; Yuan Yuan; Hongyan Li

doi:10.1016/j.cor.2012.08.015

A FTA-based method for risk decision-making in emergency response

Comput Oper Res. 2014 Feb:42:49-57. doi: 10.1016/j.cor.2012.08.015. Epub 2012 Sep 4.

Authors

Yang Liu¹, Zhi-Ping Fan¹, Yuan Yuan¹, Hongyan Li¹

Affiliation

¹ Department of Management Science and Engineering, School of Business Administration, Northeastern University, Shenyang 110004, China.

Abstract

Decision-making problems in emergency response are usually risky and uncertain due to the limited decision data and possible evolvement of emergency scenarios. This paper focuses on a risk decision-making problem in emergency response with several distinct characteristics including dynamic evolvement process of emergency, multiple scenarios, and impact of response actions on the emergency scenarios. A method based on Fault Tree Analysis (FTA) is proposed to solve the problem. By analyzing the evolvement process of emergency, the Fault Tree (FT) is constructed to describe the logical relations among conditions and factors resulting in the evolvement of emergency. Given different feasible response actions, the probabilities of emergency scenarios are estimated by FTA. Furthermore, the overall ranking value of each action is calculated, and a ranking of feasible response actions is determined. Finally, a case study on H1N1 infectious diseases is given to illustrate the feasibility and validity of the proposed method.

Keywords: Emergency response; Fault tree analysis (FTA); Ranking; Scenario probability estimation.