Stochastic Network Design for Planning Scheduled Transportation Services: The Value of Deterministic Solutions

Xin Wang (), Teodor Gabriel Crainic () and Stein Wallace
Additional contact information
Xin Wang: Department of Management Science, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster LA1 4YX, United Kingdom, Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, 7491 Trondheim, Norway
Teodor Gabriel Crainic: Interuniversity Research Centre on Enterprise Networks, Logistics and Transportation (CIRRELT), Québec GIV 0A6, Canada, Département de management et technologie, École des sciences de la gestion, UQAM, Montréal, Quebec H2L 2C4, Canada

INFORMS Journal on Computing, 2019, vol. 31, issue 1, 153-170

Abstract: We study the value of deterministic solutions, in particular their quality and upgradability, in addressing stochastic network design problems, by analyzing their time-dependent formulations known as scheduled service network design problems in freight transportation planning. We study several problem variants and models and investigate, for each case, the immediate quality of the deterministic solutions stemming from the 50th and the 75th percentile of the demand distributions. We then show that for all models, but in different ways, we are able to make effective use of parts of the deterministic solution, confirming the value of the deterministic solution in the stochastic environment, even when the deterministic solution itself performs badly.

We also investigate what makes the optimal stochastic solution better in the stochastic environment than other feasible solutions, particularly those obtained by addressing deterministic versions of the problem. We do this by quantitatively analyzing the structures of different solutions. A measurement scheme is proposed to evaluate the level of potentially beneficial structural properties (multipath usage and path sharing) in different solutions. We show that these structural properties are important and correlated with the performance of a solution in the stochastic environment.

Keywords: service network design; stochastic programming; value of deterministic solution (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1287/ijoc.2018.0819 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:orijoc:v:31:y:2019:i:1:p:153-170

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in INFORMS Journal on Computing from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().