Two-stage Robust Optimization Approach for Enhanced Community Resilience Under Tornado Hazards

TL;DR

This paper develops a two-stage robust optimization model to improve community resilience against tornadoes by optimizing retrofitting and recovery strategies, demonstrating significant reductions in population dislocation in a case study.

Contribution

It introduces a novel two-stage robust optimization framework for tornado mitigation that accounts for uncertain tornado paths and integrates retrofitting and recovery decisions.

Findings

Up to 20% reduction in worst-case population dislocation.

Investing 15 million dollars in retrofitting yields significant resilience benefits.

The proposed approach outperforms existing retrofitting policies.

Abstract

Catastrophic tornadoes cause severe damage and are a threat to human wellbeing, making it critical to determine mitigation strategies to reduce their impact. One such strategy, following recent research, is to retrofit existing structures. To this end, in this article we propose a model that considers a decision-maker (a government agency or a public-private consortium) who seeks to allocate resources to retrofit and recover wood-frame residential structures, to minimize the population dislocation due to an uncertain tornado. In the first stage the decision-maker selects the retrofitting strategies, and in the second stage the recovery decisions are made after observing the tornado. As tornado paths cannot be forecast reliably, we take a worst-case approach to uncertainty where paths are modeled as arbitrary line segments on the plane. Under the assumption that an area is affected if it is sufficiently close to the tornado path, the problem is framed as a two-stage robust optimization problem with a mixed-integer non-linear uncertainty set. We solve this problem by using a decomposition column-and-constraint generation algorithm that solves a two-level integer problem at each iteration. This problem, in turn, is solved by a decomposition branch-and-cut method that exploits the geometry of the uncertainty set. To illustrate the model's applicability, we present a case study based on Joplin, Missouri. Our results show that there can be up to 20 percent reductions in worst-case population dislocation by investing 15 million dollars in retrofitting and recovery; that our approach outperforms other retrofitting policies, and that the model is not over-conservative.