A branch-and-cut algorithm for the profitable windy rural postman problem

Thais Ávila, Ángel Corberán, Isaac Plana and José M. Sanchis

European Journal of Operational Research, 2016, vol. 249, issue 3, 1092-1101

Abstract: In this paper we study the profitable windy rural postman problem. This is an arc routing problem with profits defined on a windy graph in which there is a profit associated with some of the edges of the graph, consisting of finding a route maximizing the difference between the total profit collected and the total cost. This problem generalizes the rural postman problem and other well-known arc routing problems and has real-life applications, mainly in snow removal operations. We propose here a formulation for the problem and study its associated polyhedron. Several families of facet-inducing inequalities are described and used in the design of a branch-and-cut procedure. The algorithm has been tested on a large set of benchmark instances and compared with other existing algorithms. The results obtained show that the branch-and-cut algorithm is able to solve large-sized instances optimally in reasonable computing times.

Keywords: Windy rural postman problem; Arc routing; Profits; Branch-and-cut algorithm; Polyhedron (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:ejores:v:249:y:2016:i:3:p:1092-1101

DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2015.10.016

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