A decomposition-based multiobjective evolutionary algorithm using Simulated Annealing for the ambulance dispatching and relocation problem during COVID-19.

The outbreak of the COVID-19 epidemic has had a significant impact in increasing the number of emergency calls, which causes significant problems to emergency medical services centers (EMS) in many countries around the world, such as Saudi Arabia, which attracts a huge number of pilgrims during pilgrimage seasons. Among these issues, we address real-time ambulance dispatching and relocation problems (real-time ADRP). This paper proposes an improved MOEA/D algorithm using Simulated Annealing (G-MOEA/D-SA) to handle the real-time ADRP issue. The simulated annealing (SA) seeks to obtain optimal routes for ambulances to cover all emergency COVID-19 calls through the implementation of convergence indicator based dominance relation (CDR). To prevent the loss of good solutions once they are found in the G-MOEA/D-SA algorithm, we employ an external archive population to store the non-dominated solutions using the epsilon dominance relationship. Several experiments are conducted on real data collected from Saudi Arabia during the Covid-19 pandemic to compare our algorithm with three relevant state-of-art algorithms including MOEA/D, MOEA/D-M2M and NSGA-II. Statistical analysis of the comparative results obtained using ANOVA and Wilcoxon test demonstrate the merits and the outperformance of our G-MOEA/D-SA algorithm.

Quantum OPTICS and deep self-learning on swarm intelligence algorithms for Covid-19 emergency transportation.

In this paper, the quantum technology is exploited to empower the OPTICS unsupervised learning algorithm, which is a density-based clustering algorithm with numerous applications in the real world. We design an algorithm called Quantum Ordering Points To Identify the Clustering Structure (QOPTICS) and demonstrate that its computational complexity outperforms that of its classical counterpart. On the other hand, we propose a Deep self-learning approach for modeling the improvement of two Swarm Intelligence Algorithms, namely Artificial Orca Algorithm (AOA) and Elephant Herding Optimization (EHO) in order to improve their effectiveness. The deep self-learning approach is based on two well-known dynamic mutation operators, namely Cauchy mutation operator and Gaussian mutation operator. And in order to improve the efficiency of these algorithms, they are hybridized with QOPTICS and executed on just one cluster it yields. This way, both effectiveness and efficiency are handled. To evaluate the proposed approaches, an intelligent application is developed to manage the dispatching of emergency vehicles in a large geographic region and in the context of Covid-19 crisis in order to avoid an important loss in human lives. A theoretical model is designed to describe the issue mathematically. Extensive experiments are then performed to validate the mathematical model and evaluate the performance of the proposed deep self-learning algorithms. Comparison with a state-of-the-art technique shows a significant positive impact of hybridizing Quantum Machine Learning (QML) with Deep Self Learning (DSL) on solving the Covid-19 EMS transportation.