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We consider the problem of evacuating a region with the help of buses. For a given set of possible collection points where evacuees gather, and possible shelter locations where evacuees are brought to, we need to determine both collection points and shelters we would like to use, and bus routes that evacuate the region in minimum time.
We model this integrated problem using an integer linear program, and present a branch-cut-and-price algorithm that generates bus tours in its pricing step. In computational experiments we show that our approach is able to solve instances of realistic size in sufficient time for practical application, and considerably outperforms the usage of a generic ILP solver.
The Bus Evacuation Problem (BEP) is a vehicle routing problem that arises in emergency planning. It models the evacuation of a region from a set of collection points to a set of capacitated shelters with the help of buses, minimizing the time needed to bring the last person out of the endangered region.
In this work, we describe multiple approaches for finding both lower and upper bounds for the BEP, and apply them in a branch and bound framework. Several node pruning techniques and branching rules are discussed. In computational experiments, we show that solution times of our approach are significantly improved compared to a commercial integer programming solver.