A Game Theoretic Approach for Resource Allocation Based on Ant Colony Optimization in Emergency Management

In the context of multiple emergencies occurring simultaneously, the optimal allocation of relief resources to multiple emergency locations is a challenging issue in emergency management. This work presents a noncooperative complete information game model for resource allocation and an algorithm for calculating Nash equilibrium (NE). In this model, the players represent the multiple emergency locations, strategies correspond to possible resource allocations, and the payoff is modeled as function of the cost of allocation and the amount of resources requested. Thus, the optimal results are determined by the Nash equilibrium of this game. Then we design an improved ant colony optimization (ACO) algorithm to obtain the Nash equilibrium by introducing dynamic random search technique. Experimental results show that the proposed model is effective in optimizing resource allocation during multiple emergencies for emergency management decision support.