Abstract

• Time-efficient solutions of the Asset Protection Problem (APP). • The Modified Ant Colony System (MACS) is proposed. • Especially designed solution-improving heuristic techniques. • New best results in large-scale benchmark instances. • MACS outperforms previous APP solution approaches. During an escaped wildfire in a populated area’s vicinity, protective tasks should be carried out to secure crucial community assets, e.g., bridges, hospitals, power stations, and communication towers. In a real-life scenario, an important asset may require the combined effort of different fire suppression resources, which should be dispatched and scheduled to act synchronously in protecting the respective asset. The present research addresses the solution of a challenging routing problem in emergency response, the Asset Protection Problem (APP), which incorporates selective characteristics in routing a heterogeneous vehicle fleet with complex temporal and spatial constraints, i.e., time windows and synchronization requirements. Notably, the Modified Ant Colony System (MACS) algorithm is proposed to obtain effective APP solutions within a time suitable for operational purposes. Based on the conducted experiments, MACS outperforms the previously published solution approaches in the solution of large-scale APP benchmark instances. Notably, MACS obtained superior solutions in 159 out of 240 large-scale instances, while 87 of them represent new best results, considering the solutions achieved by the commercial solver CPLEX with a ten-hour time limit.

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