Battlefield evacuation optimization during a mass casualty incident

Funding opportunity

Battlefield evacuation optimization during a mass casualty incident.

Anticipated timeline and budget

Background

Researchers are invited to apply for a funding opportunity focused on the optimization of casualty evacuations on a battlefield during a mass casualty incident.

When multiple simultaneous casualties occur on a battlefield, Medical Technicians must prioritize casualties for evacuation to higher-resource facilities, considering injuries, transport options, and destination facilities. With these constraints, an optimization problem emerges as to how to optimally match casualties to transport and destination facilities in order to enhance health outcomes.

Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC) is seeking to investigate evacuation optimization considering the health status of casualties, evacuation platform requirements, and resources available at the destination medical facility.

Research objectives

Conduct an analysis into the science of a complex optimization problem for in-theatre coordination of casualty evacuation. The analysis should include the development of an optimization theory to prioritize evacuation that takes into consideration constraints of distance, transport time, transport platform characteristics, casualty characteristics, medical facility characteristics, and other relevant factors.

Final deliverable to include:

• A report that:
  • Identifies academic literature and public documents regarding battlefield evacuation prioritization.
  • Identifies appropriate optimization methodologies for casualty evacuation prioritization.
  • Develops a meta-data schema for characterizing casualties, transport platforms, and destination medical facilities.
  • Generates several realistic mass casualty evacuation scenarios and demonstrate how the methodology generates evacuation prioritization recommendations at a local casualty collection point. Performance of the methodology should be compared to simpler prioritization policies.
  • Gender-based analysis and considerations.

Milestones/phases of progress

The recipient will provide updates on key milestones and is responsible for independently determining how to achieve the desired outcomes.

1. Whitepaper detailing state-of-the-art optimization modeling architectures with recommendations for the best implementation in the medical evacuation context.
2. Set of mass casualty evacuation scenarios
3. Optimization architecture diagram.
4. Demonstration of the feasibility of optimization methods for mass casualty evacuation scenarios.
5. Final report.

Desired outputs

A final research report detailing the findings from the study, including optimization methodologies and scenario simulations. A bibliography and a virtual presentation of findings (which may take place after the project end date) will also be made available. The format of the final deliverables should adhere to the requirements outlined in the funding agreement.

Applicant qualifications and requirements for selection

• Proposals led by a senior investigator with a PhD in a relevant field.
• A post-graduate or graduate degree in operational research, optimization, or a related field.
• Have conducted and published studies on logistics analysis or logistics optimization.
• Have at least one of the following: publication, research grant, award or project, as a proven record of conducting optimization analyses.
• Have experience in delivering software solutions.

Application deadline

Please download and submit the Research Funding Application form.

Enquiries

Questions about this funding opportunity can be sent to the VAC Research office.