A Memetic Algorithm for the Network Construction Problem with Due Dates

Abstract

In this work, we present an effective memetic algorithm for a transportation network reconstruction problem. The problem addressed arises when the connections of a transportation network have been destroyed by a disaster, and then need to be rebuilt by a construction crew in order to minimize the damage caused in the post-disaster phase. Each vertex of the network has a due date that indicates its self-sufficiency, i.e., a time that this vertex may remain isolated from the network without causing more damages. The objective of the problem is to reconnect all the vertices of the network in order to minimize the maximum lateness in the recovery of the vertices. The computational results show that our memetic algorithm is able to find solutions with same or higher quality in short computation time for most instances when compared to the methods already present in the literature.