While balancing straight assembly lines is a well-studied problem, the Situation where the assembly line has a U-shaped Iayout is a still emerging research field. The advantage of these lines is that workers may simply turn around to operate at two legs of the line. Hence, there is an additional...

The population of an urban area may be in danger due to disasters like floods, hurricanes, chemical or nuclear accidents. This requires decisions to protect the affected population. One decision may be to evacuate the affected area. For the exceptional case of an evacuation an approach to...