Location Analysis of Earthquake Relief Warehouses: Evaluating the Efficiency of Location Combinations by DEA

Earthquakes are natural disasters that can cause heavy casualties and great property losses. To effectively rescue the affected people, it is very important to set up warehouses for relief supplies, and the location of a disaster relief warehouse affects its ability to provide disaster relief. Comprehensive analysis of the indicators for alternative locations can produce a ranking, but if the top-ranking disaster relief warehouse locations are chosen, it may happen that the selected locations are too close to each other. To solve this problem, this paper combines locations into sets; selects coverage, distance, and risk as indicators; and then uses a data envelopment analysis (DEA) method to determine the combinations? efficiencies. If a combination?s distance between the high ranked locations is too close, this method deletes it from consideration. This technique results in a more appropriate set of locations for the disaster relief warehouses.