Measuring fuel consumption in vehicle routing: new estimation models using supervised learning

In this paper, we propose and assess the accuracy of new fuel consumption estimation models for vehicle routing. Based on real-world data consisting of instantaneous fuel consumption, time-varying speeds observations, and high-frequency traffic, we propose effective methods to estimate fuel consumption. By carrying out nonlinear regression analysis using supervised learning methods, namely Neural Networks, Support Vector Machines, Conditional Inference Trees, and Gradient Boosting Machines, we develop new models that provide better prediction accuracy than classical models. We correctly estimate consumption for time-dependent point-to-point routing under realistic conditions. Our methods provide a more precise alternative to classical regression methods used in the literature, as they are developed for a specific situation. Extensive computational experiments under realistic conditions show the effectiveness of the proposed machine learning consumption models, clearly outperforming macroscopic and microscopic consumption models such as the Comprehensive Modal Emissions Model (CMEM) and the Methodology for Estimating air pollutant Emissions from Transport (MEET). Based on sensitivity analyses we show that MEET underestimates real-world consumption by 24.94% and CMEM leads to an overestimation of consumption by 7.57% with optimised parameters. Our best machine learning model (Gradient Boosting Machines) exhibited superior estimation accuracy with a gap of only 1.70%.