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An improved ant colony optimization based algorithm for the capacitated arc routing problem

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  • Santos, Luís
  • Coutinho-Rodrigues, João
  • Current, John R.

Abstract

The capacitated arc routing problem is a well-studied problem in the Transportation/Logistics/OR literature. The problem consists of identifying the minimum cost routes required to service (e.g., pickup or deliver) demand located along the edges of a network. Unfortunately, the problem belongs to the set of NP-Hard problems; consequently, numerous heuristic and metaheuristic solution approaches have been developed to solve it. In this article, an ant colony optimization based metaheuristic is presented. Modifications are introduced for various components of the ant colony metaheuristics; specifically for those associated with the "initial population", the "ant decision rule" and the "local search procedure". The new metaheuristic was tested on seven standard test networks for the capacitated arc routing problem. The results demonstrate that the proposed approach performs extremely well vis-à-vis the state-of-the-art metaheuristics for the problem.

Suggested Citation

  • Santos, Luís & Coutinho-Rodrigues, João & Current, John R., 2010. "An improved ant colony optimization based algorithm for the capacitated arc routing problem," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 44(2), pages 246-266, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:transb:v:44:y:2010:i:2:p:246-266
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    3. Marta S.R. Monteiro & Dalila B.M.M. Fontes & Fernando A.C.C. Fontes, 2013. "Solving Hop-constrained MST problems with ACO," FEP Working Papers 493, Universidade do Porto, Faculdade de Economia do Porto.
    4. Porumbel, Daniel & Coelho, Igor M. & Talbi, El-Ghazali, 2024. "Using an exact bi-objective decoder in a memetic algorithm for arc-routing (and other decoder-expressible) problems," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 313(1), pages 25-43.
    5. Tao Zhang & W. Art Chaovalitwongse & Yuejie Zhang, 2014. "Integrated Ant Colony and Tabu Search approach for time dependent vehicle routing problems with simultaneous pickup and delivery," Journal of Combinatorial Optimization, Springer, vol. 28(1), pages 288-309, July.
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    9. Reddy, K. Nageswara & Kumar, Akhilesh & Choudhary, Alok & Cheng, T. C. Edwin, 2022. "Multi-period green reverse logistics network design: An improved Benders-decomposition-based heuristic approach," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 303(2), pages 735-752.
    10. Zsuzsanna Nagy & Ágnes Werner-Stark & Tibor Dulai, 2022. "An Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm for Static and Dynamic Capacitated Arc Routing Problems," Mathematics, MDPI, vol. 10(13), pages 1-38, June.
    11. Thibaut Vidal, 2017. "Node, Edge, Arc Routing and Turn Penalties: Multiple Problems—One Neighborhood Extension," Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 65(4), pages 992-1010, August.
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    13. Yu, Mingzhu & Jin, Xin & Zhang, Zizhen & Qin, Hu & Lai, Qidong, 2019. "The split-delivery mixed capacitated arc-routing problem: Applications and a forest-based tabu search approach," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 141-162.
    14. Claudia Bode & Stefan Irnich, 2015. "In-Depth Analysis of Pricing Problem Relaxations for the Capacitated Arc-Routing Problem," Transportation Science, INFORMS, vol. 49(2), pages 369-383, May.
    15. Meisel, Frank & Thiele, Nicole, 2014. "Where to dispose of urban green waste? Transportation planning for the maintenance of public green spaces," Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice, Elsevier, vol. 64(C), pages 147-162.
    16. Calvete, Herminia I. & Galé, Carmen & Iranzo, José A., 2016. "MEALS: A multiobjective evolutionary algorithm with local search for solving the bi-objective ring star problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 250(2), pages 377-388.
    17. Claudia Bode & Stefan Irnich, 2012. "In-Depth Analysis of Pricing Problem Relaxations for the Capacitated Arc-Routing Problem," Working Papers 1212, Gutenberg School of Management and Economics, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz.
    18. Li, Jiliu & Qin, Hu & Shen, Huaxiao & Tsui, Kwok Leung, 2019. "The unilateral transportation problem," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 132(C), pages 1-29.
    19. Zhang, Zhenzhen & Wei, Lijun & Lim, Andrew, 2015. "An evolutionary local search for the capacitated vehicle routing problem minimizing fuel consumption under three-dimensional loading constraints," Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 20-35.
    20. Gao, Shangce & Wang, Yirui & Cheng, Jiujun & Inazumi, Yasuhiro & Tang, Zheng, 2016. "Ant colony optimization with clustering for solving the dynamic location routing problem," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 285(C), pages 149-173.

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