2018-2020 Honduras Migration Crisis Case Study (CMFLP-MD)

Groups of refugees and asylum seekers in 2018 began migrating from Central American countries, i.e., Honduras, Guatemala, El Salvador, and Nicaragua, leaving their countries for Mexico and the USA. Many refugees were fleeing poverty and violence, made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic and two major hurricanes that hit the region in late 2020. They also hoped for the ease of asylum rules pledged by the new president of the USA. Every year, tens of thousands of Central American migrants try to reach Mexico and USA, typically on foot and in groups referred to as ``caravans". According to the Guatemalan migration office, about 6,000 refugees, mostly Hondurans, had camped near Chiquimula and on Honduras borders. Also, locals observed some caravans of 7,000 refugees in this region. Another caravan, including 4,000 refugees, was observed inside the village of Vado Hondo in Guatemala. The refugees were traveling by walking, bus, and hitchhiking.

The dataset is divided into 3 sub datasets according to the instance sizes: small-, medium-, and large-size datasets. In each small-, medium-, and large-size dataset, the longest path contains contains 19, 28, and 48 nodes, respectively. The data is created by examining several news sources daily. The large-size data set includes instances that use the main network. There are 20 instances in each data set and the instances of a data set differ in terms of the number of refugee groups or paths.

Each dataset include information related to network structure, refugee groups with population sizes, capacitated mobile facilities, and cost coefficients. We explain how the required data for the problem instances are generated based on the Honduras migration case in the related article prepared by the authors.