Hu, H., 2018. Model and algorithm for the large material distribution problem in maritime transportation.

The ocean shipping industry has a monopoly on transportation of large volumes of cargo, which is an important factor in most situations. This paper presents an innovative maritime transportation model and algorithm to address the large material distribution problem in emergency situations. The ship routing problem is one of the most popular variations of the standard vehicle routing problem (VRP). The split delivery VRP with open routes is considered in this paper with the application to the distribution of relief-related materials. It is assumed that fleets start from one depot but are not obligated to return to the same depot, that the demands of customers can be fulfilled by more than one ship, and that the travel speed on each route is variable. The objective of the model is to minimize the total travel time, and the travel speed is defined as a continuously decreasing function with respect to time. A fuzzy clustering technique is applied to determine the value of decrease parameters in the decreasing function based on geo-information. A hybrid genetic algorithm is designed to solve the model, where the Dijkstra algorithm is integrated into the process of the solution construction. Numerical simulations have been conducted, and the results demonstrate the applicability of the relief-demand distribution model and the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.