A multi-agent optimization formulation of earthquake disaster prevention and management

•We model three different agencies involved in disaster management through OR.•We coordinate agencies responsible for different phases of disaster management.•Coordination indicates an average improvement of 7.5–24% in the death toll.•Through multi-agent optimization, connections between the agencies are observed.•Efficiency of relief operations is dependent on transportation network reliability. Natural earthquake disasters are unprecedented incidents which take many lives as a consequence and cause major damages to lifeline infrastructures. Various agencies in a country are responsible for reducing such adverse impacts within specific budgets. These responsibilities range from before to after the incident, targeting one of the main phases of disaster management (mitigation, preparedness, and response). Use of OR in disaster management and coordination of its phases has been mostly ignored and highly recommended in former reviews. This paper presents a formulation to coordinate three main agencies and proposes a heuristic approach to solve the different introduced sub-problems. The results show an improvement of 7.5–24% when the agencies are coordinated.