MA-ABC: a memetic algorithm optimizing attractiveness, balance, and cost for capacitated Arc routing problems

Services such as garbage collection, road gritting, street sweeping, and power line inspection can each be formulated as a capacitated arc routing problem (CARP). The traditional formulation of CARP has the goal of minimizing the total cost of the routes making up a solution. Recently, operators of such services require routes that are balanced and visually attractive in addition to low cost. Routes that are balanced are about equal in length and provide fair work assignments. Visually attractive routes are subjective, but they usually involve non-crossing routes that provide well defined service areas. These additional features are important because they address operational complexities that arise from using the routes in practice. This paper presents MA-ABC, a memetic algorithm to find solutions for CARP that maximize route attractiveness and balance, while minimizing total cost. A novel fitness function combines route overlap with route contiguity to assess route attractiveness. MA-ABC is the first to incorporate attractiveness in a three-objective search for heuristic solutions for CARP. Experimental results on CARP benchmark instances show that MA-ABC finds a diverse set of heuristic solutions at the Pareto front, providing a wide choice for service operators to tradeoff design objectives.

诸如垃圾收集，道路沟，街道扫地和电源线检查之类的服务均可为电容性电弧路由问题（CARP）配置。鲤鱼的传统配方的目的是最大程度地减少构成解决方案的路线的总成本。最近，此类服务的运营商还需要均衡的路线，除了低成本外，还需要视觉上的吸引力。平衡的路线的长度大致相等，并提供公平的工作分配。视觉上有吸引力的路线是主观的，但它们通常涉及提供定义明确的服务领域的非横路线。这些附加功能很重要，因为它们解决了使用实践中的路线产生的操作复杂性。本文介绍了MA-ABC，这是一种模因算法，可找到用于最大化路线吸引力和平衡的鲤鱼解决方案，同时最大程度地减少总成本。一种新颖的健身功能将路线重叠与路线连续性结合在一起，以评估路线吸引力。 MA-ABC是第一个将吸引力纳入三个目标搜索鲤鱼解决方案的人。 Carpch Marks实例的实验结果表明，MA-ABC在帕累托方面找到了各种启发式解决方案，为服务运营商提供了折衷设计目标的广泛选择。