OPTIMIZATION AT SERVICE VEHICLE ROUTING AND A CASE STUDY OF ISPARTA, TURKEY

A typical application area of vehicle routing problem (VRP) is School Bus Routing Problem. In this problem, mainly, it is aimed to minimize total service time, length, number of vehicles operating etc. and maximize the capacity utility etc. under some constraints such as allowable time etc. The aim of this study is to construct a method that helps to organize the travel plans of students residing in an area and to apply this method at a pilot school determined under some requirements. The results of the study suggested that there are differences in the sense of the distance, time, and number of stops on the route of the service vehicles while it can be said that there is equality only in capacity utility

An Empirical Performance Comparison of Meta-heuristic Algorithms for School Bus Routing Problem

School Bus Routing Problem is an NP-hard Combinatorial Optimization problem. Thus, mega-heuristic algorithms are widely used to solve instances of the School Bus Routing Problem with large data. In this work we present a model of the School Bus Routing Problem and empirical performances comparison between three meta-heuristic algorithms named Simulated Annealing (SA), Tabu Search (TS) and Ant-Colony Optimization (ACO) on the problem. We have analyzed their performances in terms of solution quality. The results show that all three algorithms have the ability to solve the School Bus Routing Problem. In addition, computational results show that TS performed best when execution time is not restricted while ACO had relative good performance when time is restricted but poor when the time is unrestricted.Keywords:  School Bus Routing Problem; Combinatorial Optimization; Meta-heuristic Algorithm

Intelligent Safety Transport Framework for Schools: A Review of Route Planning and Tracking Systems

This work presents a review of recent literature in intelligent school transportation frameworks, particularly focusing on route planning, real time vehicle and children tracking. The focus on route planning and tracking is to identify the hidden practical problems and threats present in school transportation, bearing in mind safety. Different methods and technologies used for route planning and vehicle as well as children tracking are reviewed. A discussion is provided on the current frameworks along with the challenges and future research direction

Operational Research in Education

Operational Research (OR) techniques have been applied, from the early stages of the discipline, to a wide variety of issues in education. At the government level, these include questions of what resources should be allocated to education as a whole and how these should be divided amongst the individual sectors of education and the institutions within the sectors. Another pertinent issue concerns the efficient operation of institutions, how to measure it, and whether resource allocation can be used to incentivise efficiency savings. Local governments, as well as being concerned with issues of resource allocation, may also need to make decisions regarding, for example, the creation and location of new institutions or closure of existing ones, as well as the day-to-day logistics of getting pupils to schools. Issues of concern for managers within schools and colleges include allocating the budgets, scheduling lessons and the assignment of students to courses. This survey provides an overview of the diverse problems faced by government, managers and consumers of education, and the OR techniques which have typically been applied in an effort to improve operations and provide solutions

Solving school bus routing and student assignment problems with heuristic and column generation approach.

In this dissertation, we solve a school bus routing problem of transporting students including special education (handicapped) students and assigning them in Oldham county education district. The main contribution of this research is that we consider special education students (Type-2) along with other students (Type-1) and design a comprehensive school bus schedule to transport both kinds of students at the same time. Also, a student assignment mathematical model is presented to optimize the number of bus stops in use as well as one important measure of service quality, the total student walking distance. Comparing to the classic clustering methods, heuristic methods, or other methods from previous literatures, a mathematical optimization model is developed to solve a student assignment problem and to obtain the global optimal solution. The modeling constraints include budget limit, travel time limit, equity, school time window, and etc. Especially, the main difference between our model and other models is that it takes Type-2 students into consideration along with critical constraints accordingly, and solves the resulting more complex problem. Moreover, the school bus routing model in this work is one of the most general optimization models representing the school bus routing problem. On the other hand, similar to all existing models, the developed model considers the total system cost as the objective function value to minimize, different bus capacities, and common vehicle routing constraints such as flow conservation on routes and subtour elimination. Furthermore, another main difference is that the bus scheduling and school time window is also considered and solved in the model. With two different types of students, both Type-1 and Type-2, the time restrictions are varying, resulting in more complexity and additional constraints. The results in this work present the difficulties of meeting the requirement of Type-2 student riding time limit and school time window simultaneously. Also, the constraints regarding service equity and quality are provided and they can be used by decision makers if necessary. Either densely populated urban areas or sparsely populated rural areas, the school bus routing problem is difficult to solve due to a large number of students or long travel distance. The school bus routing problem falls under vehicle routing problem (VRP) with additional requirements because each student represents one unit of capacity. In this dissertation, we present a modeling framework that solves a student assignment problem with bus stop selection, and subsequently a school bus routing problem with school time window constraints. We demonstrate the efficacy of heuristic methods as well as a column generation technique implemented to solve the problems using real data

School bus selection, routing and scheduling.

The aim of this thesis is to develop formulations and exact algorithms for the school bus routing and scheduling problem and to develop an integrated software implementation using Xpress-MP/CPLEX and ArcGIS of ESRI, a geographical information system software package. In this thesis, bus flow, single commodity flow, two-commodity flow, multi-commodity flow, and time window formulations have been developed. They capture all of the important elements of the School Bus Routing and Scheduling Problem (SBRSP) including homogeneous or heterogeneous bus fleets, the identification of bus stops from a large set of potential bus stops, and the assignment of students to stops and stops to routes. They allow for the one stop-one bus and one stop-multi bus scenarios. Each formulation of the SBRSP has a linear programming relaxation and we present the relationships among them. We present a Branch-and-Cut exact algorithm which makes use of new linearization techniques, new valid inequalities, and the first valid equalities. We develop an integrated software package that is based on Geographical Information System (GIS) map-based interface, linking to an Xpress-MP/CPLEX solver. The interface between GIS and Xpress-MP is written in VBA and VC++.Dept. of Mathematics and Statistics. Paper copy at Leddy Library: Theses & Major Papers - Basement, West Bldg. / Call Number: Thesis2005 .K4. Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 66-11, Section: B, page: 6250. Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 2005

Modelling School Bus in Favor of Needy Student: The Conceptual Framework

Surabaya city is not yet have a school bus system. With a numerous needy student, the government is realized that free school bus can support the needy student in their transportation cost. The purpose of this research is make a model that can be used by the government to designs the most optimal route and optimal distribution of the free school bus. This paper is focusing on the conceptual framework of the processes in finding the optimal route and analyzing the chosen route. The optimal route is a route that covers the area with the most number of potential passengers, the needy student. The needy density layer is the primary data that will accompanied with street layer, school layer, and bus depot layer. Not just finding the route, the chosen route then used in an accessibility analyst in order to find its effect of the school bus in existing transportation system. The result of this research indicates that the model in this project can be used to find the best route and can support the government in making a decision in the limitation they have

Supporting needy student in transportation : a population based school bus routing in spatial environment

The city government of Surabaya has offered free school tuition to help needy students. However, free tuition is not enough for some because school costs, like transportation, are not covered with the tuition fee. This project designs free school bus models to help needy students with transportation costs. The model proposed in this research is focusing to find the best routes which cover the area with the most number of potential passengers, the needy student. The needy density in a sub-sub-district area is the primary data. This needy population data will accompany street map, school map, and bus depot in the VRP process. The proposed routes from VRP process then graded in its time consumed, covered area, sharing area, and road balance. Next, the chosen route used in an accessibility analyst in order to find its affect in existing transportation system. The result indicates that the process proposed in this project can be used to find the best route and can support the government in making a decision in the limitation they have