Abstract

We describe two methods for determining good single-vehicle schedules to transport expectant mothers to health facilities. We consider two objectives: maximising the total requested trip distance completed during the day, and minimising the schedule span. One of these methods is both simple and effective-it requires the scheduler to select from a list of precomputed trip patterns each day. Zimbabwe has one of the highest maternal death rates in the world. A key contributing factor is the difficulty that expectant mothers have in getting from rural villages to health care facilities. Specificallydesigned electric vehicles, called African Solar Taxis, are currently being developed for deployment. The vehicles will be charged at solar charging stations located at health care facilities. The limited speed and range means that these vehicles must be efficiently scheduled so that expectant mothers are transported to health facilities in a timely manner. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

Abstract

In this paper, we will study a typical problem in inland container shipping, concerning the barge transportation of maritime containers between a dry port and a set of seaport terminals. The barges depart from the dry port and visit a set of sea terminals, where containers need either to be dropped off or picked up. The goal is to achieve economies of scale with barges and avoid trucking as much as possible. The decision thus involves finding the best allocation of containers to barges in order to guarantee on-time delivery and meet capacity restrictions. The problem will be modeled as a variant of the split vehicle routing problem with simultaneous pickups and deliveries coupled with time features. The model includes parameters that can be tuned to improve barge utilization and travelling distance. A hybrid local search meta-heuristic algorithm, combined with a branch-and-cut solver, will be developed to solve the model. Numerical experiments have been conducted to test the performance of the algorithm and provide solution analysis for practical insights. Real-world data has been collected from a local barge operator based in the Port of Rotterdam region and will be used as input for the experiments. This will result in an in-depth analysis into current planning practices. The proposed framework complements existing models in the literature and contributes to the development of a comprehensive set of decision support tools, which help in the decision-making process for inland terminals.