Abstract: Due to the massive emergences of natural disasters and public safety incidents, more and more attention has been paid to the stability of emergency logistics network. When the network is destroyed in an emergent incident, the demand and the arrival time (or the shortest path) of emergency supplies will be influenced. In order to determine the stability of the emergency logistics network, this paper, based on the summary of the predecessors’ work, brings up such two concepts as the network maximum flow entropy and the network shortest path entropy towards the directed network graph and the undirected network graph respectively. The greater the network entropy, the worse the stability of the emergency logistics network on this indicator, otherwise the stronger the stability will be. Then, according to the hundred-mark system idea, this paper puts forward the grade criterion on the stability of emergency logistics network based on the network entropy. Finally, it makes use of the simplified high-way network graph between cities of Jiangsu province as an example to illustrate the validity and practicability of the network maximum flow entropy and the network shortest path entropy.

Key words: emergency logistics; network stability; network maximum flow entropy; network shortest path entropy; grade criterion