Multievent Crisis Management Using Noncooperative Multistep Games

The optimal allocation of resources to emergency locations in the event of multiple crises in an urban environment is an intricate problem, especially when the available resources are limited. In such a scenario, it is important to allocate emergency response units in a fair manner based on the criticality of the crisis events and their requests. In this research, a crisis management tool is developed which incorporates a resource allocation algorithm. The problem is formulated as a game-theoretic framework in which the crisis events are modeled as the players, the emergency response centers as the resource locations with emergency units to be scheduled, and the possible allocations as strategies. The payoff is modeled as a function of the criticality of the event and the anticipated response times. The game is played assuming a specific region within a certain locality of the crisis events to derive an optimal allocation. If a solution is not feasible, the perimeter of the locality in consideration is increased and the game is repeated until convergence. Experimental results are presented to illustrate the efficacy of the proposed methodology and metrics are derived to quantify the fairness of the solution. A regression analysis is performed to establish the statistical significance of the results.