Emergency resource redistribution in the developing world: towards a practical evolutionary/meta-heuristic scheduling system

The problem of logistics in aid projects in the developing world can hardly be understated. One problem that arises is the occurrence of regional imbalances in supply. Such imbalances can seriously compromise the effectiveness of a relief program. A system is required that can suggest a workable redistribution plan. Initial results for a prototype system based on a heuristic plan generator and evolutionary/meta-heuristic optimisers, on real data, were encouraging; however more work still needs to be undertaken before the system can be deployed in the real-world. This paper describes some ongoing work to address some of these issues.