Publisher's Synopsis
This book is a comprehensive introduction to the design and development of heuristic algorithm that could be used for solving rich Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP). VRP relates to the problem of providing optimum service with a fleet of vehicles to customers. It is a combinatorial optimization problem. The objective is usually to maximize the profit of the operation. However, for public transportation owned and operated by government, accessibility takes priority over profitability. Accessibility usually reduces profit, while increasing profit tends to reduce accessibility. In this research, we look at how accessibility can be increased without penalizing the profitability. This requires the determination of routes with minimum fuel consumption, maximum number of ports of call and maximum load factor satisfying a number of pre-determined constraints, i.e. hard and soft constraints. The hard constraints are travel time, travel distance and the restriction that a route must contain at least one fuel port. Soft constraints concerns with ship draft and load factor.
