The research of location problem of national emergency reserve facilities for emergency relief based on P-center problem

China is one of the countries suffering from the most disasters in the world, so national emergency reserve facilities location is critical for the country to reduce loss from disasters. Considering that emergency management is more concerned about effectiveness than efficiency, the paper proposes an emergency reserve facilities location problem (EFLP) model, which is an extension of the classic P-center problem, for the Chinese national emergency reserve facilities location decision. Some features, including population distribution, economic condition, transportation, and multi-coverage for some vital areas, are put into the proposed model, all of which are characterized with data gathered from the reality. Avariable neighborhood search (VNS) based heuristic algorithm is developed to solve the extensional model. The computational result gained is compared with current emergency reserve facilities location planning in China. It is shown that huge saving can be gained with the guarantee that the rescue resources could be delivered in time. Moreover, the proposed VNS based algorithm shows its good performance in the computational experiment.