Canadian Prize Collection Problem: Assessing the Impact of a Disaster Event

This paper introduces the Canadian prize collection problem and demonstrates its application for assessing the impact of a disaster event on a region, which can arise in either a military or a humanitarian logistics context. The key difference between the Canadian prize collection problem and the “standard” prize collection problem is that some edges are obstructed. These impassable edges are not known a priori; rather, they are discovered by the vehicle as it traverses the network. Three heuristic solution approaches are developed for this problem: a prize collection focused method, a shortest path focused method, and a hybrid method. These three heuristic solution approaches are implemented on a case study that is aimed at assessing the impact of a hurricane event in the Washington, DC-New York City-Boston area. The case study is evaluated at four probability levels of edge obstruction and considering a wide range of available budgets. Results indicate that the shortest path heuristic approach outperforms the prize collection heuristic in most cases for smaller budgets. Also, the shortest path heuristic performs increasingly well compared to the prize collection heuristic as the probability of edge obstruction increases.