Determining the required number of base stations for winter road maintenance and their locations by integer linear programming
Abstract
Cold weather and precipitation that occur even in the winter can significantly threaten the normal functioning of road traffic. Therefore, winter road maintenance activities are significant and need to be planned. Some of the decisions related to winter road maintenance can include determining the number and location of base stations, determining the structure of the vehicle fleet, defining the amount of road-spreading material that needs to be procured, etc. This paper focused on determining the number and locations of base stations for winter road maintenance. This is an important problem of a strategic nature, which was solved in two steps in the paper. In the first step, the minimum required number of base stations is determined to cover the entire observed region. In the second step, specific locations of facilities are determined, to minimize the total distance that vehicles need to travel during road maintenance. In both steps, the solution is performed using integer linear programming. In the paper, the model was tested using the example of road maintenance in the Banat district. Excel Solver was used to solve integer linear programs.
Downloads
Copyright (c) 2024 Journal of Road and Traffic Engineering
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License CC BY-NC that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
