论文标题
在人群射击系统中,用于集线器位置问题的连续近似方法
A Continuum Approximation Approach to the Hub Location Problem in a Crowd-Shipping System
论文作者
论文摘要
物流链中的最后一英里交付有助于排放和拥堵增加。人群吹牛是传统交付的可持续且低成本的替代品,但在很大程度上依赖偶尔的快递员的可用性。在这项工作中,我们提出了一个基于枢纽的人群吹动系统,旨在吸引足够的潜在众人群,以满足大部分对小包裹的需求。尽管最近解决了此问题的小规模版本,但较大实例的缩放范围显着使问题复杂化。基于连续近似的启发式方法旨在评估潜在的集线器位置的质量。通过将有效,准确的近似方法与大型邻里搜索启发式结合在一起,我们可以有效地找到一组良好的集线器位置,即使对于大型网络也是如此。此外,除了确定良好的集线器位置外,我们的方法还允许在每个区域中确定预期的已交付包裹数,可用于设计智能动态分配策略。关于华盛顿特区网络的案例研究表明,枢纽是在地理位置上既是核心的位置建造的,但最重要的是群众群体的流行起源。相对于开放式枢纽所涉及的成本,人群射击者可以提供最佳的枢纽数量。我们的算法的性能接近模拟优化算法的性能,但速度快25倍。因此,结果显示了基于连续近似估计的动态分配策略优于现有分配策略。
Last-mile delivery in the logistics chain contributes to emissions and increased congestion. Crowd-shipping is a sustainable and low-cost alternative to traditional delivery, but relies heavily on the availability of occasional couriers. In this work, we propose a hub-based crowd-shipping system that aims to attract sufficient potential crowd-shippers to serve a large portion of the demand for small parcels. While small-scale versions of this problem have been recently addressed, a scaling to larger instances significantly complexifies the problem. A heuristic approach based on continuum approximation is designed to evaluate the quality of a potential set of hub locations. By combining an efficient and accurate approximation method with a large neighborhood search heuristic, we are able to efficiently find a good set of hub locations, even for large scale networks. Furthermore, on top of determining good hub locations, our methods allow to identify the expected number of delivered parcels in every region, which can be used to design a smart dynamic assignment strategy. A case study on the Washington DC network shows that hubs are built at locations that are both geographically central, but most importantly are popular origins for crowd-shippers. The optimal number of hubs is mainly dependent on the marginal number of parcels that can be served by crowd-shippers from a specific hub, relative to the costs involved in opening that hub. The performance of our algorithm is close to that of a simulation-optimization algorithm, yet being up to 25 times faster. Thereby, the results show a dynamic assignment policy based on continuum approximation estimates outperforms existing assignment strategies.