On green routing and scheduling problem

The vehicle routing and scheduling problem has been studied with much interest within the last four decades. In this paper, some of the existing literature dealing with routing and scheduling problems with environmental issues is reviewed, and a description is provided of the problems that have been investigated and how they are treated using combinatorial optimization tools

Finding k-Dissimilar Paths with Minimum Collective Length

Shortest path computation is a fundamental problem in road networks. However, in many real-world scenarios, determining solely the shortest path is not enough. In this paper, we study the problem of finding k-Dissimilar Paths with Minimum Collective Length (kDPwML), which aims at computing a set of paths from a source s to a target t such that all paths are pairwise dissimilar by at least \theta and the sum of the path lengths is minimal. We introduce an exact algorithm for the kDPwML problem, which iterates over all possible s-t paths while employing two pruning techniques to reduce the prohibitively expensive computational cost. To achieve scalability, we also define the much smaller set of the simple single-via paths, and we adapt two algorithms for kDPwML queries to iterate over this set. Our experimental analysis on real road networks shows that iterating over all paths is impractical, while iterating over the set of simple single-via paths can lead to scalable solutions with only a small trade-off in the quality of the results.Comment: Extended version of the SIGSPATIAL'18 paper under the same titl

When Hashing Met Matching: Efficient Spatio-Temporal Search for Ridesharing

Carpooling, or sharing a ride with other passengers, holds immense potential for urban transportation. Ridesharing platforms enable such sharing of rides using real-time data. Finding ride matches in real-time at urban scale is a difficult combinatorial optimization task and mostly heuristic approaches are applied. In this work, we mathematically model the problem as that of finding near-neighbors and devise a novel efficient spatio-temporal search algorithm based on the theory of locality sensitive hashing for Maximum Inner Product Search (MIPS). The proposed algorithm can find $k$ near-optimal potential matches for every ride from a pool of $n$ rides in time $O(n^{1 + \rho} (k + \log n) \log k)$ and space $O(n^{1 + \rho} \log k)$ for a small $\rho < 1$. Our algorithm can be extended in several useful and interesting ways increasing its practical appeal. Experiments with large NY yellow taxi trip datasets show that our algorithm consistently outperforms state-of-the-art heuristic methods thereby proving its practical applicability

Dissimilar arc routing problems

Money collection presents particular problems in terms of effective vehicle routing. Planning the collection or distribution of money for ATMs or parking meters gives rise to two problems: while the total collecting time should be minimized, tours on successive days should be different to prevent robberies. The combination of these two problems is named as the Dissimilar Routing Problem. When the safes to be collected are located along the streets, it corresponds to an arc routing problem, which we call DARP, and when the money is from ATMs, it corresponds to a vehicle routing problem, usually referred to as the peripatetic routing problem. The former problem arises in a Portuguese company in charge of street parking in Lisbon. The firm needs to define tours to collect safes from parking meters, minimizing the total collecting time. To avoid robberies these tours cannot be repeated or somehow anticipated. For this new problem, we present a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model and develop a matheuristic. Preliminary experiments are provided with data that mimic the real confidential data. Results point to a good performance of the matheuristic, while the smaller instances can be solved to optimality with the MILP model and a commercial solver.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Optimal Alignments for Designing Urban Transport Systems: Application to Seville

The achievement of some of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) from the recent 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development has drawn the attention of many countries towards urban transport networks. Mathematical modeling constitutes an analytical tool for the formal description of a transportation system whereby it facilitates the introduction of variables and the definition of objectives to be optimized. One of the stages of the methodology followed in the design of urban transit systems starts with the determination of corridors to optimize the population covered by the system whilst taking into account the mobility patterns of potential users and the time saved when the public network is used instead of private means of transport. Since the capture of users occurs at stations, it seems reasonable to consider an extensive and homogeneous set of candidate sites evaluated according to the parameters considered (such as pedestrian population captured and destination preferences) and to select subsets of stations so that alignments can take place. The application of optimization procedures that decide the sequence of nodes composing the alignment can produce zigzagging corridors, which are less appropriate for the design of a single line. The main aim of this work is to include a new criterion to avoid the zigzag effect when the alignment is about to be determined. For this purpose, a curvature concept for polygonal lines is introduced, and its performance is analyzed when criteria of maximizing coverage and minimizing curvature are combined in the same design algorithm. The results show the application of the mathematical model presented for a real case in the city of Seville in Spain.Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad MTM2015-67706-

Solving Assignment and Routing Problems in Mixed Traffic Systems

This doctoral thesis presents not only a new traffic assignment model for mixed traffic systems but also new heuristics for multi-paths routing problems, a case study in Hanoi Vietnam, and a new software, named TranOpt Plus, supporting three major features: map editing, dynamic routing, and traffic assignment modeling. We investigate three routing problems: k shortest loop-less paths (KSLP), dissimilar shortest loop-less paths (DSLP), and multi-objective shortest paths (MOSP). By developing loop filters and a similarity filter, we create two new heuristics based on Eppstein's algorithm: one using loop filters for the KSLP problem (HELF), the other using loop-and-similarity filters for the DSLP problem (HELSF). The computational results on real street maps indicate that the new heuristics dominate the other algorithms considered in terms of either running time or the average length of the found paths. In traffic assignment modeling, we propose a new User Equilibrium (UE) model, named GUEM, for mixed traffic systems where 2- and 4-wheel vehicles travel together without any separate lanes for each kind of vehicle. At the optimal solution to the model, a user equilibrium for each kind of vehicle is obtained. The model is applied to the traffic system in Hanoi, Vietnam, where the traffic system is mixed traffic dominated by motorcycles. The predicted assignment by the GUEM model using real collected data in Hanoi is in high agreement with the real traffic situation in Hanoi. Finally, we present the TranOpt Plus software, containing the implementation of all the routing algorithms mentioned in the thesis, as well as the GUEM model and a number of popular traffic assignment models for both standard traffic systems and mixed traffic systems. With its intuitive graphical user interface (GUI) and its strong visualization tools, TranOpt Plus also enables users without any mathematical or computer science background to use conveniently. Nevertheless, TranOpt Plus can be easily extended by further map-related problems, e.g., transportation network design, facility location, and the traveling salesman problem. Keywords: mixed traffic assignment modeling, routing algorithms, shortest paths, dissimilar paths, Hanoi, TranOpt Plus, map visualizatio

The Dynamics of Vehicular Networks in Urban Environments

Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANETs) have emerged as a platform to support intelligent inter-vehicle communication and improve traffic safety and performance. The road-constrained, high mobility of vehicles, their unbounded power source, and the emergence of roadside wireless infrastructures make VANETs a challenging research topic. A key to the development of protocols for inter-vehicle communication and services lies in the knowledge of the topological characteristics of the VANET communication graph. This paper explores the dynamics of VANETs in urban environments and investigates the impact of these findings in the design of VANET routing protocols. Using both real and realistic mobility traces, we study the networking shape of VANETs under different transmission and market penetration ranges. Given that a number of RSUs have to be deployed for disseminating information to vehicles in an urban area, we also study their impact on vehicular connectivity. Through extensive simulations we investigate the performance of VANET routing protocols by exploiting the knowledge of VANET graphs analysis.Comment: Revised our testbed with even more realistic mobility traces. Used the location of real Wi-Fi hotspots to simulate RSUs in our study. Used a larger, real mobility trace set, from taxis in Shanghai. Examine the implications of our findings in the design of VANET routing protocols by implementing in ns-3 two routing protocols (GPCR & VADD). Updated the bibliography section with new research work

On Achieving Diversity in the Presence of Outliers in Participatory Camera Sensor Networks

This paper addresses the problem of collection and delivery of a representative subset of pictures, in participatory camera networks, to maximize coverage when a significant portion of the pictures may be redundant or irrelevant. Consider, for example, a rescue mission where volunteers and survivors of a large-scale disaster scout a wide area to capture pictures of damage in distressed neighborhoods, using handheld cameras, and report them to a rescue station. In this participatory camera network, a significant amount of pictures may be redundant (i.e., similar pictures may be reported by many) or irrelevant (i.e., may not document an event of interest). Given this pool of pictures, we aim to build a protocol to store and deliver a smaller subset of pictures, among all those taken, that minimizes redundancy and eliminates irrelevant objects and outliers. While previous work addressed removal of redundancy alone, doing so in the presence of outliers is tricky, because outliers, by their very nature, are different from other objects, causing redundancy minimizing algorithms to favor their inclusion, which is at odds with the goal of finding a representative subset. To eliminate both outliers and redundancy at the same time, two seemingly opposite objectives must be met together. The contribution of this paper lies in a new prioritization technique (and its in-network implementation) that minimizes redundancy among delivered pictures, while also reducing outliers.unpublishedis peer reviewe