A discrete-event simheuristic for enhancing urban mobility

Abstract

This paper addresses a rich variant of the team orienteering problem under uncertainty to improve urban mobility. Specifically, we conduct a case study using real-world data from urban transportation hubs in Barcelona, gathered from Open Data Barcelona. The study involves routing autonomous delivery drones operating within a university campus to deliver items to designated drop-off points. Traditional optimization techniques often fail to account for the stochastic fluctuations inherent in urban traffic and the complex interactions between various transportation activities. To address these challenges, this research employs a simheuristic framework that combines heuristic optimization with commercial simulation software to replicate the dynamic and uncertain nature of urban environments accurately. The efficiency and practical applicability of our simheuristic framework are demonstrated through comprehensive computational experiments in a real-world context.