A Robust,Multi-criteria Modeling Approach for Optimizing Aeromedical Evacuation Asset Emplacement

Abstract

According to current force health protection policy, the U.S. Army’s Health Service Support system is designed to maintain a healthy force and to conserve the combat strength of deployed soldiers. Specifically, this system remains particularly effective by employing standardized aeromedical evacuation assets and providing a responsive field-sited medical treatment facility for the wounded soldiers evacuated from the battlefield. Since the beginning of Operation Enduring Freedom, military commanders have faced a significant combinatorial challenge integrating these life-saving yet limited air evacuation assets into a fully-functional, comprehensive system for the entire theatre, which deserves thorough analysis for decision-making. This work describes a robust, multi-criteria decision analysis methodology using a scenario-based, stochastic optimization goal-programming model that U.S. Army medical planners can use as a strategic and tactical aeromedical evacuation asset-planning tool to help bolster and improve the current air evacuation system in Afghanistan. Specifically, this model optimizes over a set of expected scenarios with stochastically-determined casualty locations to emplace the minimum number of helicopters at each medical treatment facility necessary to maximize the coverage of the theatre-wide casualty demand and the probability of meeting that demand, while minimizing the maximal medical treatment facility evacuation site total vulnerability to enemy attack.

Keywords

goal programming optimization stochastic modeling decision analysis medical evacuation

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