Synchronized arc routing for snow plowing operations

A mixed integer formulation and an adaptive large neighborhood search heuristic are proposed for a synchronized arc routing problem for snow plowing operations and the performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated over a large instance set, including artificial and real data.

Abstract

This paper introduces a synchronized arc routing problem for snow plowing operations. In this problem, routes must be designed in such a way that street segments with two or more lanes in the same direction are plowed simultaneously by different synchronized vehicles. A mixed integer formulation and an adaptive large neighborhood search heuristic are proposed. The performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated over a large instance set, including artificial and real data. Computational results confirm the efficiency of the algorithm.