Abstract: Earthquakes can cause significant disruption and devastation to populations of communities. Thus, in the event of an earthquake, it is necessary to have the right number of disaster shelters, with the appropriate capacity, in the right location in order to accommodate local communities. Mathematical models, allied with suitable optimization algorithms, have been used to determine the locations at which to construct disaster shelters and allocate the population to them. This paper compares the use of two optimization algorithms, namely a genetic algorithm and a modified particle swarm optimization, both of which have advantages and disadvantages when solving the disaster shelter location-allocation problem.