A heuristic algorithm optimizing emergency resource storage and location in the South China Sea

With the rapid growth of oil and gas field exploration projects in the South China Sea, there is an increase in operational incidents. It is of the utmost importance to optimize the allocation of limited emergency resources and establish a feasible humanitarian logistics rescue network for on-site operators. This paper proposes a multi-objective optimization model for the storage and location of logistical emergency assistance and rescue resources in the South China Sea. Three components comprise the proposed model: geographical environment impact, emergency rescue response time, and emergency resource allocation cost. In the first step, the Fuzzy Comprehensive Evaluation Method (FCEM) is used to introduce and calculate the comprehensive impact index of the interference factors on the South China Sea storage candidate spots, which indicates the uncertainty ratio of the target sea influenced by the geographical environment. Consequently, we improve the expected reproduction rate (the possibility of generating storage points) in the Immune Algorithm (IA), overcome the general optimization process, suppress the concentration of emergency resource storage scheme, and form a new heuristic algorithm, the Improved Immune Algorithm (IIA). Lastly, using a dataset of fire and explosion occurrences during oil and gas development in the South China Sea as an illustration, the effectiveness of the target model and the suggested method are estimated and confirmed. The IIA results indicate that, when different working environments and multi-level accidents are considered, the emergency response time is reduced by 83.71 percent compared to the current emergency resource supply system, and the emergency resource allocation cost is reduced by 1.2%–8.02% compared to the IA. It exhibits the feasibility and rationale of this method's site selection results in the specified special zone.