The article, "Facility Location for Emergency Evacuation," co-written by Seokjin Kim, assistant professor of information systems and operations management has been accepted for publication in Annals of Operations Research, a top journal in operations management.

The paper proposes a new analytical model to locate service facilities on a network for large-scale emergencies. In natural disasters such as the Hurricane Katrina of 2005 or artificial disasters such as terrorist attacks (e.g., September 11, 2001), the impacted areas need to be evacuated immediately. The residents need to be moved to safe locations as quickly as possible. This can lead to a sudden and tremendous surge of demands for emergency services, while the service facilities within the areas may become functionless due to destruction. Unlike the traditional location models, the proposed model explicitly incorporates the assumption that the residents cannot rely on their nearest service facilities.