An Application of Vehicle-Routing Methodology to Large-Scale Larvicide Control Programs

Marius Solomon, Alain Chalifour, Jacques Desrosiers and Jacques Boisvert
Additional contact information
Marius Solomon: Management Science Department, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA
Alain Chalifour: Département de Mathématiques et Informatique, Université du Quebec à Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivieres, Canada, G9A 5H7
Jacques Desrosiers: GERAD and Ecole des Hautes Etudes Commerciales, Montréal, Canada, H3T 1V6
Jacques Boisvert: Département de Chimie-Biologie, Université du Quebec à Trois-Rivières, Trois-Rivières, Canada, G9A 5H7

Interfaces, 1992, vol. 22, issue 3, 88-99

Abstract: Because black flies transmit disease-producing parasites, many countries try to control them by treating their breeding sites. We designed a strategy to minimize larvicide treatment costs. It involves the minimization of the larvicide used and the number of injection points, achieved by combining a mortality model of larvae, a model for the behavior of the larvicide in water-courses, and a shortest-path model. The strategy also involves the minimization of the flight time for the helicopters used to deploy larvicide, performed by a state-of-the-art heuristic. This method showed potential savings of $100,000 per year on a trial three-day circuit for one helicopter, issued by the onchocerciasis control program (OCP) aerial operations in Western Africa.

Keywords: programming: integer; applications; transportation: route selection; health care (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 1992
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/inte.22.3.88 (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:orinte:v:22:y:1992:i:3:p:88-99

Access Statistics for this article

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