Aircraft routing under uncertainty via robust optimization

• Grant number: 19/22235-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Effective date (Start): March 01, 2020
• Effective date (End): August 07, 2022
• Field of knowledge: Engineering - Production Engineering - Operational Research
• Principal Investigator: Pedro Augusto Munari Junior
• Grantee: Rafael Ajudarte de Campos
• Host Institution: Centro de Ciências Exatas e de Tecnologia (CCET). Universidade Federal de São Carlos (UFSCAR). São Carlos , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 16/01860-1 - Cutting, packing, lot-sizing, scheduling, routing and location problems and their integration in industrial and logistics settings, AP.TEM

Abstract

This project addresses the robust vehicle routing problem (RVRP), focusing on the development of mathematical models and solution methods to incorporate uncertainties regarding travel time and demand existence. We intend to address a practical variant, the aircraft routing problem, motivated by a real case of an on-demand airline company. Features such as heterogeneous vehicle fleet, time windows, maintenance requests and crew journey rules will be incorporated into robust optimization models that allow for the variability of uncertain parameters to be addressed. In particular, a new type of commodity flow model formulation, not yet explored in the robust optimization literature, even in the classic case, will be investigated. Thus, in addition to contributions to aircraft routing, it is believed that the model to be proposed is also suitable for the resolution of classic variants of RVRP. To assist in obtaining feasible solutions in short computational time, a meta-heuristic that also takes into account the uncertainties of the input data should be proposed. The proposed approaches will be computationally implemented and analyzed through computational experiments using instances from the literature and actual company data. Hence, it is expected to contribute to the scientific literature by proposing new models and solution methods for the relatively unexplored classic RVRP variants with uncertainties in travel time and existence of demand, in addition to the potential for practical contributions involving aircraft routing, due to interaction with industry and the possibility of analysis of results in collaboration with the studied company. (AU)