Stochastic modeling and algorithms for the Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problem with Urgent Tasks

Our objective is to minimize response time to urgent tasks while maintaining efficient operation for the regular tasks.em lot-sizing problems which are (NP-)hard because of the shape of the objective function, typically non-concave.

We develop a Markov Decision Process that may be solved to optimality for small instances. For larger instances, we develop an approximate solution using Approximate Dynamic Programming and Reinforcement Learning.

Our approach fully exploits the available information on the random nature of urgent tasks, which allows us to further reduce response time compared to models available in literature, among others, due to an improved spatial and temporal spread of vehicles over the service area. The routing problems arise, for example, in cleaning, maintenance and security applications.

This is joint work with Richard Boucherie, Dylan Huizing, Diego Pecin, Remy Spliet.

About Jasper Bos

Jasper Bos is a last-year PhD student at the research center CHOIR of the University of Twente. His PhD research addresses planning and scheduling of cleaning in health care, in particular on jointly optimizing for routine and urgent incidental cleaning tasks.  

Coordinators

• Michal Mankowski
• Olga Kuryatnikova.