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Chapter 21
DOI: 10.4018/978-1-4666-7258-1.ch021
ABSTRACT
The vehicle routing problem requires mostly meta-heuristics to fnd approximate solutions. Congestion
makes it hard for planners to fnd good routes because travel times are uncertain. The problem is handled
by building scenarios with a range of possible travel times to represent the uncertainty. The main goal
is to fnd a robust solution, which performs “well” in bad scenarios. The experiments show that robust
results are obtained in a computationally reasonable time, which means that the concept can be used
by practitioners. Most applications are commercial, but also social applications exist. An earthquake
or a food might lead to road disruptions. Higher trafc delays appear due to lower speed on fooded
roads or due to time spent on fnding alternative routes. Routing like evacuation of wounded or delivery
of food is hardly studied. The work is inspired by the 2011 fooding in Thailand.
INTRODUCTION
Vehicle Routing Problems (VRPs) are a class of combinatorial problems which are challenging to the
scientific society of operations researchers. On the one hand, this popularity is due to the high level
of difficulty of finding optimal solutions to the problems of a rather large size. On the other hand, the
popularity relates to the fact that this problem appears in many practical situations and mostly in a vari-
ant which is even much harder than the classical VRP.
Robust Vehicle Routing
Solutions to Manage Time
Windows in the Case of
Uncertain Travel Times
Gerrit K. Janssens
Hasselt University, Belgium
Kusuma Soonpracha
Kasetsart University, Thailand
Tharinee Manisri
Sripatum University, Thailand
Anan Mungwattana
Kasetsart University, Thailand