Emissions Minimization Vehicle Routing Problem

Environmental, social and political pressures to limit the impacts associated with green house gas (GHG) emissions are mounting rapidly. To date there has been no or limited research which seeks to reduce emissions as the primary objective of a routing problem despite the fast growth and high impact of commercial vehicles. In the capacitated vehicle routing problem with time windows (VRPTW), it is traditionally assumed that carriers minimize the number of vehicles as a primary objective and distance travelled as a secondary objective without violating time windows, route durations, or capacity constraints. This research focuses on a different problem, the minimization of emissions and fuel consumption as the primary or secondary objective. This creates a new type of VRP which is denoted the Emissions Vehicle Routing Problem or EVRP. This research presents a formulation and solution approaches for the EVRP. Decision variables and properties are stated and discussed. Results obtained using a proposed EVRP solution approach under different levels of congestion are compared and analyzed.