Improving maritime inventory routing: application to a Brazilian petroleum case

The crude oil offloading and supply problem (COSP) is a type of operation maritime inventory routing (MIR) problem encountered by petroleum companies. In COSP, the company not only is responsible for the ship scheduling to carry the crude oil from production sites to discharge ports but also must maintain inventory levels at both ports (production and consumption) between safety operational bounds to avoid disruptions in its crude oil production and/or refining processes. We show how to improve significantly the decision-making process in a Brazilian petroleum company using a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) model to represent COSP. Comparison tests with a current ship-scheduling method adopted in the company indicated that the use of the MILP model increased the transportation efficiency and reduced costs by 20% on average. In addition to the quantitative gains, the use of a MILP model to solve COSP has succeeded when encountering real-life events, such as variation in production or consumption rates, berth unavailability, and changes in the storage capacities at ports.     

Order-first split-second methods for vehicle routing problems: A review

Cluster-first route-second methods like the sweep heuristic (Gillett and Miller, 1974) are well known in vehicle routing. They determine clusters of customers compatible with vehicle capacity and solve a traveling salesman problem for each cluster. The opposite approach, called route-first cluster-second, builds a giant tour covering all customers and splits it into feasible trips. Cited as a curiosity for a long time but lacking numerical evaluation, this technique has nevertheless led to successful metaheuristics for various vehicle routing problems in the last decade. As many implementations consider an ordering of customers instead of building a giant tour, we propose in this paper the more general name of ordering-first split-second methods. This article shows how this approach can be declined for different vehicle routing problems and reviews the associated literature, with more than 70 references.     

Multi-objective optimization of train routing problem combined with train scheduling on a high-speed railway network

Based on train scheduling, this paper puts forward a multi-objective optimization model for train routing on high-speed railway network, which can offer an important reference for train plan to provide a better service. The model does not only consider the average travel time of trains, but also take the energy consumption and the user satisfaction into account. Based on this model, an improved GA is designed to solve the train routing problem. The simulation results demonstrate that the accurate algorithm is suitable for a small-scale network, while the improved genetic algorithm based on train control (GATC) applies to a large-scale network. Finally, a sensitivity analysis of the parameters is performed to obtain the ideal parameters; a perturbation analysis shows that the proposed method can quickly handle the train disturbance.     

利用改进交叉算子的混合遗传算法求解VRPTW

设计了一种改进的混合遗传算法求解带有时间窗、有车辆重量限制的车辆优化调度问题（VRPTW），根据问题的实际情况，建立了数学模型，提出了改进的交叉算子，丰富了种群的多样性；并结合模拟退火算法的思想，对染色体的适应度适当变化，改善了传统的遗传算法容易“早熟”的缺点，加强了染色体的局部搜索能力。     

具有同时配送和回收需求的车辆路径问题的混合遗传算法

介绍了具有同时配送和回收需求的车辆路径问题(VRPSDP),并对其进行了描述,建立了该问题的数学规划模型。结合2-opt法和等级替换策略等设计了求解VRPSDP的一种混合遗传算法,给出了该算法初始种群的两种生成规则———随机生成和构造初始种群,设计了相应的交叉和变异算子,并详细阐述了违反约束条件的处理方法。通过随机模拟试验以及与其他方法的对比分析表明:该算法可有效缩短车辆行驶距离,而构造初始种群则在一定条件下可显著提高混合遗传算法的收敛速度并改善其运行结果。     

Ant Colony Routing algorithm for freeway networks

Dynamic traffic routing refers to the process of (re)directing vehicles at junctions in a traffic network according to the evolving traffic conditions. The traffic management center can determine desired routes for drivers in order to optimize the performance of the traffic network by dynamic traffic routing. However, a traffic network may have thousands of links and nodes, resulting in a large-scale and computationally complex non-linear, non-convex optimization problem. To solve this problem, Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) is chosen as the optimization method in this paper because of its powerful optimization heuristic for combinatorial optimization problems. ACO is implemented online to determine the control signal – i.e., the splitting rates at each node. However, using standard ACO for traffic routing is characterized by four main disadvantages: 1. traffic flows for different origins and destinations cannot be distinguished; 2. all ants may converge to one route, causing congestion; 3. constraints cannot be taken into account; and 4. neither can dynamic link costs. These problems are addressed by adopting a novel ACO algorithm with stench pheromone and with colored ants, called Ant Colony Routing (ACR). Using the stench pheromone, the ACR algorithm can distribute the vehicles over the traffic network with less or no traffic congestion, as well as reduce the number of vehicles near some sensitive zones, such as hospitals and schools. With colored ants, the traffic flows for multiple origins and destinations can be represented. The proposed approach is also implemented in a simulation-based case study in the Walcheren area, the Netherlands, illustrating the effectiveness of the approach.     

Intermodal and international freight network modeling

The authors describe the development and application of a single, integrated digital representation of a multimodal and transcontinental freight transportation network. The network was constructed to support the simulation of some five million origin to destination freight shipments reported as part of the 1997 United States Commodity Flow Survey. The paper focuses on the routing of the tens of thousands of intermodal freight movements reported in this survey. Routings involve different combinations of truck, rail and water transportation. Geographic information systems (GIS) technology was invaluable in the cost-effective construction and maintenance of this network and in the subsequent validation of mode sequences and route selections. However, computationally efficient routing of intermodal freight shipments was found to be most efficiently accomplished outside the GIS. Selection of appropriate intermodal routes required procedures for linking freight origins and destinations to the transportation network, procedures for modeling intermodal terminal transfers and inter-carrier interlining practices, and a procedure for generating multimodal impedance functions to reflect the relative costs of alternative, survey reported mode sequences.     

路网车流径路选择随机相关机会规划模型及其混合遗传算法

研究随机环境下车流径路的选择问题,首先给出路网车流径路方案可靠性的定义,并在此基础上建立随机环境下车流径路选择问题的随机相关机会多目标规划模型。模型考虑了车流具有不同权重的情况,目标为极大化车流径路方案的可靠性及极小化期望总费用。用C＋＋语言编写K短路算法,并在Visual Studio 6.0上基于该算法开发了软件,用于计算网络上任意两点之间的K短路。以该软件计算出的K短路作为节点间的可选径路集,提出一种基于随机模拟的混合遗传算法。算例表明,在不同交叉和变异概率的条件下算法均可在给定进化代数内收敛至相同的最优解,有较强的适应性。     

IEEE802．16d无线MESH网络路由协议研究

无线Mesh网络是一种新型的无线通信网络,具有自组织、自管理和自愈的特点,是一种多跳的宽带无线接入网络结构,也是一种高容量、高速率的分布式网络。在介绍WMN基本概念的基础上,针对制约MESH网络发展的路由技术问题,在传统AODV路由协议的基础上提出了新的路由协议OLRP,并给出仿真结果。     

The Pollution-Routing Problem

The amount of pollution emitted by a vehicle depends on its load and speed, among other factors. This paper presents the Pollution-Routing Problem (PRP), an extension of the classical Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) with a broader and more comprehensive objective function that accounts not just for the travel distance, but also for the amount of greenhouse emissions, fuel, travel times and their costs. Mathematical models are described for the PRP with or without time windows and computational experiments are performed on realistic instances. The paper sheds light on the tradeoffs between various parameters such as vehicle load, speed and total cost, and offers insight on economies of ‘environmental-friendly’ vehicle routing. The results suggest that, contrary to the VRP, the PRP is significantly more difficult to solve to optimality but has the potential of yielding savings in total cost.