Network planning and design

About: Network planning and design is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 12393 publications have been published within this topic receiving 229776 citations. The topic is also known as: network design.

Models and Tabu Search Metaheuristics for Service Network Design with Asset-Balance Requirements

Abstract: This paper focuses on a generic model for service network design, which includes asset positioning and utilization through constraints on asset availability at terminals. We denote these relations as “design-balance constraints” and focus on the design-balanced capacitated multicommodity network design model, a generalization of the capacitated multicommodity network design model generally used in service network design applications. Both arc-and cycle-based formulations for the new model are presented. The paper also proposes a tabu search metaheuristic framework for the arc-based formulation. Results on a wide range of network design problem instances from the literature indicate the proposed method behaves very well in terms of computational efficiency and solution quality.

Multimodal Express Package Delivery: a Service Network Design Application

Abstract: The focus of this research is to model and solve a large-scale service network design problem involving express package delivery. The objective is to find the cost minimizing movement of packages from their origins to their destinations, given very tight service windows, limited package sort capacity, and a finite number of ground vehicles and aircraft. We have developed a model for large scale transportation service network design problems with time windows. With the use of route-based decision variables, we capture complex cost structures and operating regulations and policies. The poor linear programming bounds limit our ability to solve the problem, so we strengthen our linear programming relaxation by adding valid inequalities. By exploiting problem structure using a specialized network representation and applying a series of novel problem reduction methods, we achieve dramatic decreases in problem size without compromising optimality of the model. Our solution optimization approach synthesizes column and row generation optimization techniques and heuristics to generate solutions to an express package delivery application containing hundreds of thousands of constraints and billions of variables, using only a small fraction of the constraint matrix. The results are potential savings in annual operating costs of tens of millions of dollars, reductions in the fleet size required, dramatic decreases in the time required to develop operating plans, and scenario analysis capabilities for planners and analysts. Through this and additional computational experiments, we conclude that, although state-of-the-art integer programming methods can work well for relatively small, uncongested service network design problems, they must be used in concert with heuristics to be effective for large-scale, congested problems encountered in practice.

Review of traffic data estimations extracted from cellular networks

Abstract: One of the main characteristics of modern society is the never-ending increase in mobility. This leads to a series of problems such as congestion and increased pollution. To resolve these problems, it is imperative to have a good road network management and planning. To efficiently identify the characteristics of traffic in the road network, it would be necessary to perform a permanent monitorisation of all roadway links. This would involve an excessive cost of installation and maintenance of road infrastructure. Hence, new alternatives are required which can characterise traffic in a real time with good accuracy at an acceptable price. Mobile telephone systems are considered as a promising technology for the traffic data collection system. Its extensive use in converting its subscribers in a broad sample to draw information from phones becomes anonymous probes to monitor traffic. It is reviewed how to obtain parameters related to traffic from cellular-network-based data, describing methods used in existing simulation works as well as field tests in the academic and industrial field.

Network design for the estimation of areal mean of rainfall events

Abstract: This work recognizes rainfall as a multidimensional stochastic process. By using the knowledge of such processes and of multivariate estimation theory a procedure for designing an optimal network to obtain the areal mean precipitation of an event over a fixed area is developed. The methodology used in this problem allows consideration of the following aspects of network design: (1) spatial uncertainty and correlation of process, (2) errors in measurement techniques and their correlation, and (3) non-homogeneous sampling costs. Optimal networks are given in terms of the number and location of stations together with the resulting cost and mean square error of rainfall estimation.