A GRASP metaheuristic to improve accessibility after a disaster

We consider the problem of allocating scarce resources to repair a rural road network after it has been damaged by a natural or man-made disaster. We propose a solution approach based on the GRASP and VNS metaheuristics that aims to maximize the accessibility of as many people as possible to the main cities or regional centers where the economic and social infrastructure is usually located. The efficiency of our approach is demonstrated by applying it to a set of small and medium size instances and to a large real-life motivated instance. Results point out the importance of OR techniques to support the disaster management decision process operations, particularly during the recovery phase.