Optimal Model and Algorithm of Medical Materials Delivery Drone Routing Problem under Major Public Health Emergencies

To reduce distribution risk and improve the efficiency of medical materials delivery under major public health emergencies, this paper introduces a drone routing problem with time windows. A mixed-integer programming model is formulated considering contactless delivery, total travel time, and customer service time windows. Utilizing Dantzig–Wolfe decomposition, the proposed optimization model is converted into a path-based master problem and a pricing subproblem based on an elementary shortest path problem with resource constraints. We embed the pulse algorithm into a column generation framework to solve the proposed model. The effectiveness of the model and algorithm is verified by addressing different scales of Solomon datasets. A case study on COVID-19 illustrates the application of the proposed model and algorithm in practice. We also perform a sensitivity analysis on the drone capacity that may affect the total distribution time. The experimental results enrich the research related to vehicle routing problem models and algorithms under major public health emergencies and provide optimized relief distribution solutions for decision-makers of emergency logistics.

The Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Social Economy and Sustainability (preprint)

The Corona virus has been raging on across the world affecting hundreds of countries and billions of people. Naturally, it has had huge impacts on the world economy as a whole and the lives of people. This study aims to find out the effects that the COVID-19 has had on social economy and sustainability. The study takes up the primary aspects of social well-being like Poverty, Employment, The Condition of Women, Global Trade and Food Security and tries to find out the impact that the pandemic had on them. Analysing secondary data and reports from major international organisations like the United Nations and World Bank, this paper concludes that the effects of the pandemic have been huge. All the major aspects of the social economy have been affected by the pandemic and have resulted in huge losses in terms of economic well-being and social capital.