Multi-objective two-stage emergent blood transshipment-allocation in COVID-19 epidemic

Yufeng Zhou; Jiahao Cheng; Changzhi Wu; Kok Lay Teo

doi:10.1007/s40747-023-00976-x

Multi-objective two-stage emergent blood transshipment-allocation in COVID-19 epidemic

Complex Intell Systems. 2023 Feb 24:1-19. doi: 10.1007/s40747-023-00976-x. Online ahead of print.

Authors

Yufeng Zhou¹, Jiahao Cheng², Changzhi Wu³, Kok Lay Teo⁴

Affiliations

¹ Research Center for Economy of Upper Reaches of the Yangtze River, Chongqing Technology and Business University, Chongqing, 400067 China.
² School of Business Administration, Chongqing Technology and Business University, Chongqing, 400067 China.
³ School of Management, Guangzhou University, Guangzhou, 510006 China.
⁴ School of Mathematics, Sunway University, 47500 Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia.

Abstract

The problem of blood transshipment and allocation in the context of the COVID-19 epidemic has many new characteristics, such as two-stage, trans-regional, and multi-modal transportation. Considering these new characteristics, we propose a novel multi-objective optimization model for the two-stage emergent blood transshipment-allocation. The objectives considered are to optimize the quality of transshipped blood, the satisfaction of blood demand, and the overall cost including shortage penalty. An improved integer encoded hybrid multi-objective whale optimization algorithm (MOWOA) with greedy rules is then designed to solve the model. Numerical experiments demonstrate that our two-stage model is superior to one-stage optimization methods on all objectives. The degree of improvement ranges from 0.69 to 66.26%.

Keywords: Blood shortage; Blood supply chain; Blood transshipment; COVID-19; MOWOA.