(44ce) Routes Optimization for Hazardous Materials Transportation in Bogotá, Colombia

The present work presents an optimization approach to design the set of routes for the transport of hazardous materials (HazMats) at Bogotá.  HazMats transportation importance lies in the social, environmental and economic impact that might happen when an accident, during the transportation occurs. This paper is focused in developing a decision support system supported on optimization tools with the purpose of find the routes, -from gas distributor to gas stations-, that minimize: the total travel distance of heterogeneous tank trucks, the social risk and the infrastructure risk around the routes created. 

The problem is modeled as a vehicle routing problem and it is solved using the principle of Route first, Cluster second. In a first stage the algorithm generates a big tour where all clients are visited, ignoring the vehicle capacities. Secondly, thanks to a Split procedure the tour is segmented considering the capacities. Then routes are improved with a  MultiObjective Metaheuristic called MultiObjective Variable Neighborhood Search (MO-VNS). The algorithm is tested on two set of instances, the first one randomly generated and the second from Bogotá Geographic Information System (GIS). Several approaches to generated solution are proposed.