Optimization of Emergency Supply and Distribution of Fresh Agricultural Products Under Public Health Emergencies

Abstract

COVID-19 is a major public health emergency, the Chinese government adopts pandemic prevention and control measures such as home quarantine in order to block the strong contagiousness of the virus. In order to solve the problem of distribution difficulties due to the limited transportation resources brought by the pandemic and to guarantee the demand of fresh agricultural products for the isolated residents, this study takes the emergency supply as the main objective, and designs three distribution modes, namely, single distribution center, multi-vehicle model based on the classification of temperature zones, and multi-distribution center for isolated communities of different sizes, with the objectives of minimizing the number of vehicles in use, minimizing the average response time, and minimizing the risk of viral infections. A multi-objective optimization model was constructed as the objectives. Then the genetic algorithm is improved by adding destruction operator, repair operator and greedy operation, and the effectiveness of the algorithm is verified through empirical research, and the advantages of the algorithm in convergence speed are compared and analyzed. Finally, different distribution methods are suggested for the number of communities of different sizes. This study can provide a scientific basis for government departments to formulate an optimized decision-making plan for the emergency supply and distribution of fresh agricultural products under public health emergencies.

Keywords

• Fresh produce
• emergency supply
• multi-objective optimization
• improved genetic algorithm (IM-GA)