Abstract
The growing concern about the influences of anthropogenic pollutions has forced researchers and scholars to study the environmental concerns. This paper addresses a joint daily route and speed optimization problem in home health care (HHC) with the constraints of synchronized visits and carbon emissions. In this work, the aim is to design a reasonable logistics route with the objective of minimizing the carbon emissions, which has a linear relationship with fuel consumption. This goal can reduce environmental pollution while optimizing operating costs for the HHC company. This paper formulated the problem as a mixed-integer programming (MIP) model and used the Gurobi solver to solve the MIP model with a time limit of 1 h. However, the method based on the MIP model is difficult to solve large-scale instances. Therefore, this paper proposed an ant colony optimization (ACO)-based heuristic approach improved by local search for this problem with large-scale instances. The minimal carbon emissions of each route is calculated by a dynamic programming (DM) algorithm. We designed three kinds of experiments to test the proposed approach, including the basic vehicle routing problem with time window (VRPTW), the studied problem with one speed and the studied problem with two speeds. The experimental results highlight the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach.
Similar content being viewed by others
Explore related subjects
Discover the latest articles, news and stories from top researchers in related subjects.References
Aarts E, Aarts EH, Lenstra JK (2003) Local search in combinatorial optimization. Princeton University Press
Afifi S, Dang DC, Moukrim A (2016) Heuristic solutions for the vehicle routing problem with time windows and synchronized visits. Optim Lett 10(3):511–525
Allaoua H, Borne S, Létocart L, Calvo RW (2013) A matheuristic approach for solving a home health care problem. Electron Notes Discrete Math 41:471–478
Begur SV, Miller DM, Weaver JR (1997) An integrated spatial DSS for scheduling and routing home-health-care nurses. Interfaces 27(4):35–48
Bektaş T, Laporte G (2011) The pollution-routing problem. Transp Res Part B Methodol 45(8):1232–1250
Bertels S, Fahle T (2006) A hybrid setup for a hybrid scenario: combining heuristics for the home health care problem. Comput Oper Res 33(10):2866–2890
Braekers K, Hartl RF, Parragh SN, Tricoire F (2016) A bi-objective home care scheduling problem: analyzing the trade-off between costs and client inconvenience. Eur J Oper Res 248(2):428–443
Bredström D, Rönnqvist M (2008) Combined vehicle routing and scheduling with temporal precedence and synchronization constraints. Eur J Oper Res 191(1):19–31
Cai L, Lv W, Xiao L, Xu Z (2020) Total carbon emissions minimization in connected and automated vehicle routing problem with speed variables. Expert Syst Appl 165:113910
Chauhan D, Unnikrishnan A, Figliozzi M (2019) Maximum coverage capacitated facility location problem with range constrained drones. Transp Res Part C Emerg Technol 99:1–18
Cissé M, Yalçındağ S, Kergosien Y, Şahin E, Lenté C, Matta A (2017) Or problems related to home health care: a review of relevant routing and scheduling problems. Oper Res Health Care 13:1–22
Decerle J, Grunder O, El Hassani AH, Barakat O (2018) A memetic algorithm for a home health care routing and scheduling problem. Oper Res Health Care 16:59–71
Demir E, Bektaş T, Laporte G (2014) The bi-objective pollution-routing problem. Eur J Oper Res 232(3):464–478
Dorigo M, Blum C (2005) Ant colony optimization theory: a survey. Theor Comput Sci 344(2–3):243–278
Erdoğan S, Miller-Hooks E (2012) A green vehicle routing problem. Transp Res Part E Logist Transp Rev 48(1):100–114
Eveborn P, Flisberg P, Rönnqvist M (2006) Laps care-an operational system for staff planning of home care. Eur J Oper Res 171(3):962–976
Fathollahi-Fard AM, Hajiaghaei-Keshteli M, Tavakkoli-Moghaddam R (2018) A bi-objective green home health care routing problem. J Clean Prod 200:423–443
Golden BL, Raghavan S, Wasil EA (2008) The vehicle routing problem: latest advances and new challenges, vol 43. Springer
Grenouilleau F, Legrain A, Lahrichi N, Rousseau LM (2019) A set partitioning heuristic for the home health care routing and scheduling problem. Eur J Oper Res 275(1):295–303
Harris MD (2005) Handbook of home health care administration. Jones & Bartlett Learning
Hazen BT, Skipper JB, Boone CA, Hill RR (2018) Back in business: operations research in support of big data analytics for operations and supply chain management. Ann Oper Res 270(1–2):201–211
Hickman J, Hassel D, Joumard R, Samaras Z, Sorenson S (1999) Methodology for calculating transport emissions and energy consumption
Hiermann G, Prandtstetter M, Rendl A, Puchinger J, Raidl GR (2015) Metaheuristics for solving a multimodal home-healthcare scheduling problem. Cent Eur J Oper Res 23(1):89–113
Jabali O, Van Woensel T, De Kok A (2012) Analysis of travel times and co2 emissions in time-dependent vehicle routing. Prod Oper Manag 21(6):1060–1074
Kirkinen J, Palosuo T, Holmgren K, Savolainen I (2008) Greenhouse impact due to the use of combustible fuels: life cycle viewpoint and relative radiative forcing commitment. Environ Manag 42(3):458
Lin SW, Vincent FY (2017) Solving the team orienteering problem with time windows and mandatory visits by multi-start simulated annealing. Comput Ind Eng 114:195–205
Liu J, Yang J, Liu H, Tian X, Gao M (2017) An improved ant colony algorithm for robot path planning. Soft Comput 21(19):5829–5839
Liu R, Xie X, Augusto V, Rodriguez C (2013) Heuristic algorithms for a vehicle routing problem with simultaneous delivery and pickup and time windows in home health care. Eur J Oper Res 230(3):475–486
Liu R, Yuan B, Jiang Z (2017) Mathematical model and exact algorithm for the home care worker scheduling and routing problem with lunch break requirements. Int J Prod Res 55(2):558–575
Liu R, Tao Y, Xie X (2019) An adaptive large neighborhood search heuristic for the vehicle routing problem with time windows and synchronized visits. Comput Oper Res 101:250–262
Luo H, Dridi M, Grunder O (2019) Ant colony optimization algorithm for a transportation problem in home health care with the consideration of carbon emissions. In: International conference on artificial evolution (Evolution Artificielle), Springer, pp 136–147
Mankowska DS, Meisel F, Bierwirth C (2014) The home health care routing and scheduling problem with interdependent services. Health Care Manag Sci 17(1):15–30
Mavrovouniotis M, Yang S (2013) Ant colony optimization with immigrants schemes for the dynamic travelling salesman problem with traffic factors. Appl Soft Comput 13(10):4023–4037
Moscato P, et al (1989) On evolution, search, optimization, genetic algorithms and martial arts: towards memetic algorithms. Caltech concurrent computation program, C3P Report 826:1989
Nalepa J, Blocho M (2016) Adaptive memetic algorithm for minimizing distance in the vehicle routing problem with time windows. Soft Comput 20(6):2309–2327
Nasir JA, Kuo YH (2020) A decision support framework for home health care transportation with simultaneous multi-vehicle routing and staff scheduling synchronization. Decis Support Syst 138:113361
Ombuki B, Ross BJ, Hanshar F (2006) Multi-objective genetic algorithms for vehicle routing problem with time windows. Appl Intell 24(1):17–30
Qian J, Eglese R (2014) Finding least fuel emission paths in a network with time-varying speeds. Networks 63(1):96–106
Rodriguez C, Garaix T, Xie X, Augusto V (2015) Staff dimensioning in homecare services with uncertain demands. Int J Prod Res 53(24):7396–7410
Savelsbergh M, Van Woensel T (2016) 50th anniversary invited article-city logistics: challenges and opportunities. Transp Sci 50(2):579–590
Shi Y, Boudouh T, Grunder O (2017) A hybrid genetic algorithm for a home health care routing problem with time window and fuzzy demand. Expert Syst Appl 72:160–176
Solomon MM (1987) Algorithms for the vehicle routing and scheduling problems with time window constraints. Oper Res 35(2):254–265
Tanoumand N, Ünlüyurt T (2021) An exact algorithm for the resource constrained home health care vehicle routing problem. Ann Oper Res 304:397–425
Teoh BE, Ponnambalam S, Subramanian N (2018) Data driven safe vehicle routing analytics: a differential evolution algorithm to reduce co2 emissions and hazardous risks. Ann Oper Res 270(1–2):515–538
Ursani Z, Essam D, Cornforth D, Stocker R (2011) Localized genetic algorithm for vehicle routing problem with time windows. Appl Soft Comput 11(8):5375–5390
Wang S, Meng Q (2012) Sailing speed optimization for container ships in a liner shipping network. Transp Res Part E Logist Transp Rev 48(3):701–714
Wirnitzer J, Heckmann I, Meyer A, Nickel S (2016) Patient-based nurse rostering in home care. Oper Res Health Care 8:91–102
Xiao L, Dridi M, Hajjam El Hassani A, Fei H, Lin W (2018) An improved cuckoo search for a patient transportation problem with consideration of reducing transport emissions. Sustainability 10(3):793
Yalçındağ S, Matta A, Şahin E, Shanthikumar JG (2016) The patient assignment problem in home health care: using a data-driven method to estimate the travel times of care givers. Flex Serv Manuf J 28(1–2):304–335
Yi W, Kumar A (2007) Ant colony optimization for disaster relief operations. Transp Res Part E Logist Transp Rev 43(6):660–672
Yuan B, Liu R, Jiang Z (2015) A branch-and-price algorithm for the home health care scheduling and routing problem with stochastic service times and skill requirements. Int J Prod Res 53(24):7450–7464
Yuan B, Liu R, Jiang Z (2018) Daily scheduling of caregivers with stochastic times. Int J Prod Res 56(9):3245–3261
Zukhri Z, Paputungan IV (2013) A hybrid optimization algorithm based on genetic algorithm and ant colony optimization. Int J Artif Intell Appl 4(5):63
Acknowledgements
The first author would thank the China Scholarship Council for the financial support gratefully. (contract No. 201801810122). The current paper is an extension of the work which had been presented at EA 2019 held in Mulhouse, France, October 29–30, 2019, and the same content used in this paper is the comparison benchmark ACO algorithm in Table 7.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Contributions
Hongyuan Luo contributed to idea, conceptualization, methodology, software and writing. Mahjoub Dridi contributed to conceptualization, review and editing. Olivier Grunder contributed to conceptualization, validation, review and editing.
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Appendices
Appendix
Results for the VRPTW
In order to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed HACO algorithm, we use the HACO algorithm to solve the classical Solomon VRPTW benchmark instances. Small size problems with 25 customers and large size problems with 100 customers are used as the test instances. For each instance, we run the program for 10 times, and the computing results are presented in the following Tables 11 and 12. It is obvious that the results highlight the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed HACO algorithm.
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Luo, H., Dridi, M. & Grunder, O. An ACO-based heuristic approach for a route and speed optimization problem in home health care with synchronized visits and carbon emissions. Soft Comput 25, 14673–14696 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-021-06263-6
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00500-021-06263-6