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Allocating railroad maintenance funds by solving binary knapsack problems with precedence constraints

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  • Melching, Charles S.
  • Liebman, Judith S.

Abstract

The United States is faced with allocating funds from a limited budget to the repair or replacement of railroad track segments on military bases. The problem can be modeled as a very large binary knapsack problem having a single budget constraint and multiple precedence constraints. A procedure has been developed to convert this original problem into an equivalent knapsack problem with a single constraint and significantly fewer variables. The new knapsack problem, still too large to be solved optimally, is then solved efficiently by a heuristic which provides answers within a few percent of optimality. Furthermore, the quality of the solution improves with the size of the problem.

Suggested Citation

  • Melching, Charles S. & Liebman, Judith S., 1988. "Allocating railroad maintenance funds by solving binary knapsack problems with precedence constraints," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 181-194, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:transb:v:22:y:1988:i:3:p:181-194
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