Reducing greenhouse gas emissions of a heterogeneous vehicle fleet (original) (raw)
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An Emission-Minimizing Vehicle Routing Problem with Heterogeneous Vehicles and Pathway Selection
2016
In addition to cost and time, greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have become a further command variable for planning processes in the transportation industry. A large number of scientific literature is devoted to the development of planning approaches taking into account the emissions of transport processes. In order to minimize a transport process’ emissions, many factors affecting emissions have been studied. Besides the total distance covered by a transport process, the modal split, payload, traveling speed as well as vehicle type and specifications are identified as most influential planning parameters.
Vehicle Routing to Minimize Mixed-Fleet Fuel Consumption and Environmental Impact
Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Informatics in Control, Automation and Robotics, 2010
Efficient vehicle routing is critical to the operational profitability and customer satisfaction of vehicle fleetrelated businesses, especially in light of increasing, and highly volatile, fuel prices. Growing pressures to reduce negative environmental impacts have suggested that a second metric (vehicle emissions) should also be considered in vehicle routing. Currently, the majority of existing tools use distance as a surrogate for cost. When considering a mixed fleet of multiple vehicle types, with individual vehicles within a fleet type also varying by age and vehicle health, this surrogate becomes significantly less accurate. Furthermore, using distance as a surrogate fails to capture the variations between city and highway driving, which are particularly striking for hybrid vehicles. We thus propose a new approach to the vehicle routing problem, specifically targeting applications with mixed fleets including clean-vehicle technologies, in recognition of the limitations of the existing approaches.
2020
This paper formulates a mathematical model for the Green Vehicle Routing Problem (GVRP), incorporating bi-fuel (natural gas and gasoline) pickup trucks in a mixed vehicle fleet. The objective is to minimize overall costs relating to service (earliness and tardiness), transportation (fixed, variable and fuel), and carbon emissions. To reflect a real-world situation, the study considers: (1) a comprehensive fuel consumption function with a soft time window, and (2) an en-route fuel refueling option to eliminate the constraint of driving range. A linear set of valid inequalities for computing fuel consumption were introduced. In order to validate the presented model, first, the model is solved for an illustrative example. Then each component of cost objective function is considered separately so as to investigate the effects of each part on the obtained solutions and the importance of vehicles speed on transportation strategies. Computational analysis shows that, despite the limitation...
A Survey on Environmentally Friendly Vehicle Routing Problem and a Proposal of Its Classification
Sustainability
The growth of environmental awareness and more robust enforcement of numerous regulations to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions have directed efforts towards addressing current environmental challenges. Considering the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP), one of the effective strategies to control greenhouse gas emissions is to convert the fossil fuel-powered fleet into Environmentally Friendly Vehicles (EFVs). Given the multitude of constraints and assumptions defined for different types of VRPs, as well as assumptions and operational constraints specific to each type of EFV, many variants of environmentally friendly VRPs (EF-VRP) have been introduced. In this paper, studies conducted on the subject of EF-VRP are reviewed, considering all the road transport EFV types and problem variants, and classifying and discussing with a single holistic vision. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, it determines a classification of EF-VRP studies based on different types of EFVs, i.e., Alterna...
A Comparison of Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Vehicle Fleet Size in Green Vehicle Routing Problem
Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 2014
To balance a fragmented logistics organization, Small and Medium Enterprises have to find collective solutions to decrease their environmental impact. Especially when the demand at each producer takes the form of small packages and low quantities this paper examines the effect of the introduction of a consolidation center on the environmental issue. Therefore, the Fleet Size and Mix Vehicle Routing Problem (FSMVRP) was adapted in order to minimize CO2 emission. An exact mathematical formulation of the extended problem was developed to investigate the difference between homogeneous and heterogeneous fleet size on the environmental issue. Computational experiments for the problem formulation are performed using CPLEX and give a solution of a small instance to illustrate the problem. A case study focuses on optimal parcel picking up, from many producers to a common depot in the agrifood sector.
Evaluating Vehicle Routing Problems with Sustainability Costs
Proceedings of the 1st International Conference on Operations Research and Enterprise Systems, 2012
In this paper, we study the road freight transportation activities, which are significant sources of air pollution, noise and greenhouse gas emissions, with the former known to have harmful effects on human health and the latter, responsible for global warming. Specifically, an extension of the classical Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem is presented, including realistic assumptions (Time Windows, Backhauls and Heterogeneous Fleet with different vehicles and fuel types). The decisions are aimed at the selection of vehicle and fuel types, the scheduling of deliveries and pickup processes and the consolidation of freight flows. The classical objective functions of minimizing the total travel distance or the internal costs (driver, fuel or maintenance) are extended to other sustainable measures: the amount of air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions, the energy consumption and their costs. A mathematical model is described and an illustrative example is performed.
An Exact Solution for a Class of Green Vehicle Routing Problem
A mathematical model for presenting an exact solution for the Green Vehicle Routing Problem (G-VRP) is developed in this paper. G-VRP is concerned with minimizing the travel distance while maintaining less emission of carbon dioxide by using alternative sources of fuel. The solution aims to aid organizations that operate a fleet of alternative fuel-powered vehicles to overcome challenges that occur due to limitation of refueling infrastructure and vehicle driving range and to help them to plan for refueling and incorporate stops at Alternative Fuel Stations (AFS) so as to eliminate the risk of running out of fuel while sustaining low cost routes. The solution of the model shows that the problem could be extended for further adoptions and techniques as discussed.
Optimization of Conventional and Green Vehicles Composition under Carbon Emission Cap
The CO2 emission of transportation is significantly reduced by the employment of green vehicles to the existing vehicle fleet of the organizations. This paper intends to optimize the composition of conventional and green vehicles for a logistics distribution problem operating under a carbon emission cap imposed by the government. The underlying problem involves product delivery by the vehicles starting from a single depot to geographically distributed customers. The delivery occurs within specified time windows. To solve the proposed problem, we design a hybrid metaheuristic solution based on ant colony optimization (ACO) and variable neighborhood search (VNS) algorithms. Extensive computational experiments have been performed on newly generated problem instances and benchmark problem instances adopted from the literature. The proposed hybrid ACO is proven to be superior to the state-of-the-art algorithms available in the literature. We obtain 21 new best-known solutions out of 56 benchmark instances of vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW). The proposed mixed fleet model obtains the best composition of conventional and green vehicles with a 6.90% reduced amount of CO2 emissions compared to the case when the fleet consists of conventional vehicles only.
A Green Vehicle Routing Problem
Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, 2012
A Green Vehicle Routing Problem (G-VRP) is formulated and solution techniques are developed to aid organizations with alternative fuel-powered vehicle fleets in overcoming difficulties that exist as a result of limited vehicle driving range in conjunction with limited refueling infrastructure. The G-VRP is formulated as a mixed integer linear program. Two construction heuristics, the Modified Clarke and Wright Savings heuristic and the Density-Based Clustering Algorithm, and a customized improvement technique, are developed. Results of numerical experiments show that the heuristics perform well. Moreover, problem feasibility depends on customer and station location configurations. Implications of technology adoption on operations are discussed.
A path-based solution approach for the Green Vehicle Routing Problem
Computers & Operations Research, 2018
The Green Vehicle Routing Problem aims routing Alternative Fuel Vehicles, based at a depot, minimizing the total travel distance. Each vehicle handles a subset of customers, leaving from and returning to the depot, respecting a maximum duration and a distance traveled without refuels. We propose a two phases exact approach, composing each route through two/more paths. Each path serves a subset of customers without intermediate refuels. Dominance rules limit the number of feasible paths. Our approach, tested on benchmark instances, strongly outperforms the existing exact methods and it can be generalized to solve other VRP with Intermediate Stops.