The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is a complex combinatorial optimization problem which constitutes an important industrial and social issue: that of constructing routes for vehicles to visit a set of customers at minimum cost, minimizing its environmental impact of the resulting fuel consumption, as well as other human costs, which are added to the congestion problem.
The importance of this topic is reflected in the research interest. The need to develop methods, models and decision support systems (DSS) that contribute to an efficient management of transport fleets seems evident and constitutes a priority concern to both the private and the public sectors, and a challenge for the scientific community. In order to complete this target, hybrid algorithms and heuristics, based on simulation, constraint programming, combinatorial optimization and artificial intelligence, must be developed and implemented in order to make practical contributions to improve decision making processes in efficient transportation planning and management.
This track aims at presenting and discussing the state of the art and new optimization applications to solve VRP problems.
Overall objectives of the track
- To identify and present new developments of optimization algorithms and hybrid techniques which provide good solutions to real routing problems.
- To propose hybrid methodologies and algorithms, combining simulation and optimization techniques, able to provide efficient solutions.
- To propose the use of modelling methodologies (e.g. Coloured Petri Nets) enabling: routing problem formalization; systematic development of optimisation models; validation and verification of the decision making tools; and automatic generation of information subsystems.
- To propose the use of models to incorporate environmental factors associated with road transportation, as a part of the cost functions used for decision making.
- Development of tools and strategies that allow to process efficiently raw data provided by geographical information and other telecommunication systems.
- Hybrid methodologies combining different approaches to solve the VRP.
- Empirical results of the application of both hybrid and pure methodologies to VRP and all the different kinds of VRPs (i.e. CVRP, CVRPTW, P&DVRP, etc.)
- Surveys on the current state of the art regarding the VRP, comparing methodologies, techniques, etc.
- Libraries or Toolboxes (for LP, CP, etc.) containing different constraints which can be used in the construction of VRP models.
- Solutions to all those applications not including vehicles but having the same features as VRP (i.e. nets data transmission, TSP, etc.)
- Algorithms and methods to optimize the massive information extracted from GIS and needed by VRP solvers.
- All those works connecting the VRP and environmental issues, including possible future scenarios (e.g. new green vehicles, maximum speed limitations, etc.)
- Decision Support Systems.
- DSS both with and without response online and fast replannings based on GPSs and on-time information.
- All types of traffic simulators.
