Multiobjective optimization for hazardous materials transportation

Abstract

This research attempted to build a framework for determining optimal routes for hazardous materials transportation. Previous work has suggested the incorporation of many conflicting objectives in the analysis, such as travel cost, population exposure, environmental risk, and security concerns. Multiplying the number of objectives leads to complex shortest path problems that often have several efficient solutions. The present study emphasizes an overview of possible trade-offs among routes without generating all of them. A simple characterization of the efficient routes is used to select the best ones with no need for input from the decision maker. A case study with eight objective functions was performed on a road network in Singapore. A geographical information system was used to quantify road link attributes, which are assumed linear and deterministic for the sake of simplicity. The proposed algorithm derives four significantly different routes, which conform to intuition.