ε-Constraint and fuzzy logic-based optimization of hazardous material transportation via lane reservation

With economic development, a great amount of hazardous material is shipped in the transport network every day. Hazardous material transportation is well known for its high potential risk. An accident can cause very serious economic damage and will have a negative impact on public health and the environment over the long term. Transporting hazardous materials on special lanes can reduce the risk. However, a lane reservation strategy may worsen traffic conditions for other vehicles. This paper investigates a hazardous material transportation problem with lane reservation. The problem lies in how to choose lanes to be reserved in the network and select the path for each hazardous material shipment from the reserved lanes. The goal is to obtain the best compromise between the impact on normal traffic and the transportation risk. A multiobjective integer programming model is presented for the new problem. Then, an algorithm is developed based on the ε -constraint method and a fuzzy-logic-based approach. Pareto optimal solutions are obtained by the former, and a preferred solution is selected by the fuzzy-logic-based approach. Computational results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm using an instance based on a real network topology and randomly generated instances.