A Memetic Algorithm for the Green Vehicle Routing Problem

Bo Peng, Yuan Zhang, Yuvraj Gajpal and Xiding Chen
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Bo Peng: School of Business Administration, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu 610074, China
Yuan Zhang: School of Business Administration, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu 610074, China
Yuvraj Gajpal: Asper School of Business, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, MB R3T 5V4, Canada
Xiding Chen: Department of Finance, Wenzhou Business College, Wenzhou, 325035, China

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 21, 1-20

Abstract: The green vehicle routing problem is a variation of the classic vehicle routing problem in which the transportation fleet is composed of electric vehicles with limited autonomy in need of recharge during their duties. As an NP-hard problem, this problem is very difficult to solve. In this paper, we first propose a memetic algorithm (MA)—a population-based algorithm—to tackle this problem. To be more specific, we incorporate an adaptive local search procedure based on a reward and punishment mechanism inspired by reinforcement learning to effectively manage the multiple neighborhood moves and guide the search, an effective backbone-based crossover operator to generate the feasible child solutions to obtain a better trade-off between intensification and diversification of the search, and a longest common subsequence-based population updating strategy to effectively manage the population. The purpose of this research is to propose a highly effective heuristic for solving the green vehicle routing problem and bring new ideas for this type of problem. Experimental results show that our algorithm is highly effective in comparison with the current state-of-the-art algorithms. In particular, our algorithm is able to find the best solutions for 84 out of the 92 instances. Key component of the approach is analyzed to evaluate its impact on the proposed algorithm and to identify the appropriate search mechanism for this type of problem.

Keywords: green vehicle routing problem; memetic algorithm; adaptive local search; crossover operator (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

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