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A Tangible Collaborative Decision Support System for Various Variants of the Vehicle Routing Problem

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Book cover Decision Support Systems V – Big Data Analytics for Decision Making (ICDSST 2015)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing ((LNBIP,volume 216))

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Abstract

The Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is a well-known combinatorial optimization problem where a number of customers must be served with a fleet of vehicles. The classical variation of the VRP is the Capacicated Vehicle Routing Problem (CVRP) with the additional constraint that each vehicle must have uniform capacity. Many Decision Support Systems (DSS) have been implemented to solve real life problems of the VRP and its’ variants, but they do not allow multiple decision makers to explore several scenarios of a given problem simultaneously and collaborate with each other in order to find the best possible solution. In this paper, we extend our previous work [35] and incorporate in our spatial DSS four variants of the CVRP: (i) Distance Constrained Vehicle Routing Problem (DVRP), (ii) Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows (VRPTW), (iii) Vehicle Routing Problem with Backhauls (VRPB), and (iv) Vehicle Routing Problem With Pickup and Delivery (VRPPD). This extension allows decision makers to solve specific routing problems according to their needs. The proposed collaborative spatial DSS allows two decision makers to collaborate with each other in order to find the best possible solution through a tangible interface. The locations are added through interactive Google Maps and other parameters through user-friendly forms that can be manipulated via tangible interfaces. The proposed DSS has been implemented using Java, TUIO protocol, jsprit, and Google Maps.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Macedonia, 156 Egnatia Street, 54006, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Nikolaos Ploskas, Jason Papathanasiou & Nikolaos Samaras

  2. Hellenic Open University, 8 Ptolemaion Street, 50100, Kozani, Greece

    Ioannis Athanasiadis

Authors
  1. Nikolaos Ploskas
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  2. Ioannis Athanasiadis
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  3. Jason Papathanasiou
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  4. Nikolaos Samaras
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Nikolaos Ploskas .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia

    Boris Delibašić

  2. University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom

    Jorge E. Hernández

  3. University of Macedonia, Thessaloniki, Greece

    Jason Papathanasiou

  4. SimTech Simulation Technology, Graz, Austria

    Fátima Dargam

  5. Toulouse 1 Capitole University, Toulouse, France

    Pascale Zaraté

  6. UNINOVA – CA3, Lisbon, Portugal

    Rita Ribeiro

  7. University of Plymouth, Plymouth, United Kingdom

    Shaofeng Liu

  8. University of Namur, Namur, Belgium

    Isabelle Linden

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Ploskas, N., Athanasiadis, I., Papathanasiou, J., Samaras, N. (2015). A Tangible Collaborative Decision Support System for Various Variants of the Vehicle Routing Problem. In: Delibašić, B., et al. Decision Support Systems V – Big Data Analytics for Decision Making. ICDSST 2015. Lecture Notes in Business Information Processing, vol 216. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18533-0_7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-18533-0_7

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-18532-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-18533-0

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