Dynamic planning under uncertainty for theater airlift operations

In this thesis, we analyze intratheater airlift operations, and propose methods to improve the planning process. The United States Air Mobility Command is responsible for the air component of the world wide U.S. military logistics network. Due to the current conflict in Iraq, a small cell within Air Mobility Command, known as Theater Direct Delivery, is responsible for supporting ongoing operations by assisting with intratheater airlift. We develop a mathematical programming approach to schedule airlift missions that pick up and deliver prioritized cargo within time windows. In our approach, we employ composite variables to represent entire missions and associated decisions, with each decision variable including information pertaining to the mission routing and scheduling, and assigned aircraft and cargo. We compare our optimization-based approach to one using a greedy heuristic that is representative of the current planning process. Using measures of efficiency and effectiveness, we evaluate and compare the performance of these different approaches. Finally, we adjust selected parameters of our model and measure the resulting changes in operating performance of our solutions, and the required computational effort to generate the solutions.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Operations Research Center.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2007

Author dc:creator

• Martin, Kiel M. (Kiel Michael)

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Cynthia Barnhart.

• Operations Research Center.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/40387

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/40387