A web spatial decision support system for vehicle routing using Google Maps

  • Authors:

  • Luís Santos;João Coutinho-Rodrigues;Carlos Henggeler Antunes

  • Affiliations:

  • ISA-Intelligent Sensing Anywhere, Estádio Cidade de Coimbra, 92, 3030-320 Coimbra, Coimbra, Portugal and Researcher at R&D Unit INESC-Coimbra, R. Antero Quental 199, 3000-033 Coimbra, Portuga ...;Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Sciences and Technology, Polo II, University of Coimbra, 3030-788 Coimbra, Portugal and Researcher at R&D Unit INESC-Coimbra, R. Antero Quental 199, 300 ...;Department of Electrical Engineering and Computers, University of Coimbra, Faculty of Sciences and Technology, Polo II, 3030-290 Coimbra, Portugal and Researcher at R&D Unit INESC-Coimbra, R. Ante ...

  • Venue:
  • Decision Support Systems
  • Year:
  • 2011

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Abstract

This article presents a user-friendly web-based spatial decision support system (wSDSS) aimed at generating optimized vehicle routes for multiple vehicle routing problems that involve serving the demand located along arcs of a transportation network. The wSDSS incorporates Google Maps^(TM) (cartography and network data), a database, a heuristic and an ant-colony meta-heuristic developed by the authors to generate routes and detailed individual vehicle route maps. It accommodates realistic system specifics, such as vehicle capacity and shift time constraints, as well as network constraints such as one-way streets and prohibited turns. The wSDSS can be used for ''what-if'' analysis related to possible changes to input parameters such as vehicle capacity, maximum driving shift time, seasonal variations of demand, network modifications, and imposed arc orientations. Since just a web browser is needed, it can be easily adapted to be widely used in many real-world situations. The system was tested for urban trash collection in Coimbra, Portugal.