Research Area

Optimization models and algorithms for supporting decision making in transport and mobility

Vehicle Routing, Electric Vehicles, Vehicle Sharing, Recharging Stations, Autonomous Vehicles

According to the European Environment Agency, the transport sector is responsible for about a quarter of total CO2 emissions in Europe. In particular, 71.7 % of these are due to the road transport. In fact, several countries are currently promoting policies that encourage the use of green vehicles (e.g., electric vehicles).
To this aim, this research activity is mainly focused on the formulation of mathematical programming models and the design of optimization algorithms to support decision making in freight transportation and shared mobility, especially when a fleet of green vehicles is used.
The resulting decision problems are in general very complex, since one has also to take into account the limited driving range of those vehicles and then, their need to be possibly recharged during the trip.
Some application examples (but not limited to) concern:

• routing a fleet of electric vehicles to serve, within time windows, geographically distributed customers at minimum cost, with possible stops at the recharging stations during the trips
• relocating a fleet of electric vehicles in car-sharing systems to balance their supply and demand at the stations, for maximizing the number of users served
• serving online requests in ride-sharing systems, by using a fleet of autonomous electric vehicles, for maximizing the number of users served.

LORA – Laboratory for Operations Research Applications

Politecnico di Milano (ITALY), Politecnico di Torino (ITALY), Sabanci University (TURKEY), Sheffield University Management School (ENGLAND),Università degli Studi di Napoli “Federico II” (ITALY), Università degli studi di Genova (ITALY)