Abstract
Focusing on the multi-depot vehicle routing problem (MDVRP) for hazardous materials transportation, this paper presents a multi-objective optimization model to minimize total transportation energy consumption and transportation risk. A two-stage method (TSM) and hybrid multi-objective genetic algorithm (HMOGA) are then developed to solve the model. The TSM is used to find the set of customer points served by each depot through the global search clustering method considering transportation energy consumption, transportation risk, and depot capacity in the first stage, and to determine the service order of customer points to each depot by using a multi-objective genetic algorithm with the banker method to seek dominant individuals and gather distance to keep evolving the population distribution in the second stage, while with the HMOGA, customer points serviced by the depot and the serviced orders are optimized simultaneously. Finally, by experimenting on two cases with three depots and 20 customer points, the results show that both methods can obtain a Pareto solution set, and the hybrid multi-objective genetic algorithm is able to find better vehicle routes in the whole transportation network. Compared with distance as the optimization objective, when energy consumption is the optimization objective, although distance is slightly increased, the number of vehicles and energy consumption are effectively reduced.
Highlights
Hazardous materials can be toxic, corrosive, inflammable, and explosive, and are necessary for the development of industry and agriculture
Leonelli et al [3] proposed a new personal and social risk assessment model, introducing risk factors such as transportation mode, hazardous materials category, meteorologic conditions, wind direction probability, and seasonal attributes, and considered the impact of population distribution, which greatly improved the accuracy of risk assessment for hazardous materials transportation
Mohammadi et al [7] designed a reliable hazardous materials transportation network based on four factors: distance from the incident source, number of people exposed to the risk, number of hazardous materials shipments passing that segment, and the characteristics of the road type
Summary
Hazardous materials can be toxic, corrosive, inflammable, and explosive, and are necessary for the development of industry and agriculture. The daily amount of hazardous materials being transported in China exceeds 1 million tons, and the total amount per year exceeds 400 million tons [1]. These large quantities of hazardous materials form a dangerous flowing source on the roads. Based on a statistical analysis of accidents, Fabiano et al [4] discussed risk factors from the aspects of road characteristics, weather conditions, and traffic conditions, and proposed a risk assessment model for the hazardous materials transportation process at accident sites. The risk of transporting hazardous materials is related to many uncertain factors, and it is difficult to measure accurately, but it is still a factor that must be considered
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