Vehicle Routing Problem for Emissions Minimization

Environmental, social, and political pressures to limit the effects associated with greenhouse gas emissions are mounting. Little research has been done on reducing emissions as the primary objective of a routing problem despite the growth in use and impact of commercial vehicles. In the capacitated vehicle routing problem (VRP) with time windows, it is traditionally assumed that carriers minimize the number of vehicles as a primary objective and distance traveled as a secondary objective without violating time windows, route durations, or capacity constraints. New research focuses on a different problem: the minimization of emissions and fuel consumption as the primary or secondary objective. This creates the emissions VRP (EVRP). A formulation and solution approaches for the EVRP are presented. Decision variables and properties are stated and discussed. Results obtained with a proposed EVRP solution approach for different levels of congestion are compared and analyzed.