Vehicle Routing Problem for Collaborative Multidepot Petrol Replenishment under Emergency Conditions

Abstract

In recent years, emergency events have affected urban distribution with increasing frequency. For example, the 2019 novel coronavirus has caused a considerable impact on the supply guarantee of important urban production and living materials, such as petrol and daily necessities. On this basis, this study establishes a dual-objective mixed-integer linear programming model to formulate and solve the cooperative multidepot petrol emergency distribution vehicle routing optimization problem with multicompartment vehicle sharing and time window coordination. As a method to solve the model, genetic variation of multiobjective particle swarm optimization algorithm is considered. The effectiveness of the proposed method is analyzed and verified by first using a small-scale example and then investigating a regional multidepot petrol distribution network in Chongqing, China. Cooperation between petrol depots in the distribution network, customer clustering, multicompartment vehicle sharing, time window coordination, and vehicle routing optimization under partial road blocking conditions can significantly reduce the total operation cost and shorten the total delivery time. Meanwhile, usage of distribution trucks is optimized in the distribution network, that is, usage of single- and double-compartment trucks is reduced while that of three-compartment trucks is increased. This approach provides theoretical support for relevant government departments to improve the guarantee capability of important materials in emergencies and for relevant enterprises to improve the efficiency of emergency distribution.