Vehicle Routing Problems, Methods, and Applications

Vehicle routing problems, among the most studied in combinatorial optimization, arise in many practical contexts (freight distribution and collection, transportation, refuse collection, and so on). Researchers have made significant recent progress in the development of solution algorithms, which are explored in this book. The text of this new edition is either completely new or significantly revised and provides extensive state-of-the-art coverage of vehicle routing; it emphasizes methodologies for specific classes of vehicle routing problems and contains a complete overview of current solutions to combinatorial optimization problems. It also includes several chapters on important and emerging applications, such as disaster relief and green vehicle routing. This book is intended for both researchers and graduate students in operations research and applied mathematics. Practitioners will find this book particularly useful. Readers need only basic knowledge of the main solution methods for combinatorial optimization problems.

Paolo Toth is Professor Emeritus at Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna, where he was a Full Professor of Combinatorial Optimization in the Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Information Engineering 'Guglielmo Marconi' from 1983 to 2013. He is the author of more than 170 papers and five books, and he serves on the editorial boards of several journals in the areas of operations research and transportation science. Among the several international awards he has received are the Harold Larnder Memorial Lecture (annual Award of CORS, the Canadian Operations Research Society, 1998), the EURO Gold Medal (the highest distinction within Operational Research in Europe, 1998), a doctorate honoris causa in operations research (University of Montreal, 2003), and the Robert Herman Lifetime Achievement Award in Transportation Science (Transportation Science and Logistics Society of INFORMS, 2005). He was named a VeRoLog Fellow in 2012. His research interests include operational research and mathematical programming methodologies.

Daniele Vigo is Full Professor of Operations Research at the Department of Electrical, Electronic, and Information Engineering 'Guglielmo Marconi' of Alma Mater Studiorum, University of Bologna. He is author of about 100 papers and book chapters, editor of several journal special issues, and coeditor, with Paolo Toth, of The Vehicle Routing Problem (2002). He was awarded the first prize of FARO competition organized by the Italian Railways in 1995 (with Alberto Caprara, Matteo Fischetti, and Paolo Toth) and was a finalist for the Wagner Prize and twice for the EURO Excellence in Practice Award. He is founder and coordinator of VeRoLog, the EURO working group on Vehicle Routing and Logistics Optimization. His research interests are related to the design and implementation of exact and heuristic algorithms for combinatorial optimization problems arising in application areas such as vehicle routing, industrial cutting and packing, and crew management. He is also active in applied research in logistics, energy production, and resource management.