Routing is a fundamental challenge in civil engineering, with direct implications for the design, planning, and construction of transportation infrastructure such as roads, railways, and urban transit systems. Among various routing-related problems, the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) has attracted considerable attention due to its broad applicability in logistics, supply chain management, and service delivery. In the capacitated variant of the VRP (CVRP), each vehicle in the fleet is constrained by a fixed carrying capacity, making the task of determining optimal routes even more complex. Given the combinatorial nature of CVRP, the number of feasible routing configurations grows exponentially with the problem size, which necessitates the use of advanced metaheuristic algorithms capable of efficiently exploring the solution space. This study presents a novel CVRP-solving framework based on the Invasive Weed Optimization (IWO) algorithm, leveraging its strong global search ability, adaptability, and robustness in high-dimensional optimization problems. The proposed method is implemented in MATLAB, and its performance is benchmarked against several well-established optimization approaches. Simulation results reveal that the IWO-based method achieves lower total operational costs and faster convergence rates, demonstrating its potential as a practical decision-support tool for large-scale routing applications in transportation and civil engineering projects.
Golden, B. L., Raghavan, S., & Wasil, E. A. (Eds.). (2008). The Vehicle Routing Problem: Latest Advances and New Challenges. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-387-77778-8
Ghiani, G., LaporteG., & Musmanno, R. (2004). Introduction to Logistics Systems Planning and Control. Wiley. https://doi.org/10.1002/0470014040
Baldacci, R., Mingozzi, A., & Roberti, R. (2012). Recent exact algorithms for solving the vehicle routing problem under capacity and time window constraints. European Journal of Operational Research, 218, 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2011.07.037
Elshaer, R., & Awad, H. (2020). A taxonomic review of metaheuristic algorithms for solving the vehicle routing problem and its variants. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 140, 106242. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2019.106242
Movassagh, A. A., Alzubi, J., Gheisari, M., Rahimi, M., Mohan, S., Abbasi, A., & Nabipour, N. (2021). Artificial neural networks training algorithm integrating invasive weed optimization with differential evolutionary model. Journal of Ambient Intelligence and Humanized Computing, 14, 6017–6025. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12652-020-02623-6
Pasha, J., Nwodu, A., Fathollahi-Fard, A. M., Tian, G., Li, Z., Wang, H., & Dulebenets, M. A. (2022). Exact and metaheuristic algorithms for the vehicle routing problem with a factory‑in‑a‑box in multi‑objective settings. Advanced Engineering Informatics, 52, 101623. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.aei.2022.101623
Feld, S., Roch, C., Gabor, T., Seidel, C., Neukart, F., Galter, I., Mauerer, W., & Linnhoff‑Popien, C. (2018). A hybrid solution method for the capacitated vehicle routing problem using a quantum annealer. Frontiers in ICT, 6, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fict.2019.00013
Hottung, A., & Tierney, K. (2019). Neural large neighborhood search for the capacitated vehicle routing problem. arXiv preprint arXiv:1911.09539
Li, J., Ma, Y., Gao, R., Cao, Z., Lim, A., Song, W., & Zhang, J. (2021). Deep reinforcement learning for solving the heterogeneous capacitated vehicle routing problem. IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, 52, 13572–13585. https://doi.org/10.1109/TCYB.2021.3111082
Feng, L., Huang, Y., Zhou, L., Zhong, J., Gupta, A., Tang, K., & Tan, K. (2020). Explicit evolutionary multitasking for combinatorial optimization: A case study on capacitated vehicle routing problem. IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, 51, 3143–3156. https://doi.org/10.1109/TCYB.2019.2962865
Hannan, M. A., Akhtar, M., Begum, R., Basri, H., Hussain, A., & Scavino, E. (2018). Capacitated vehicle‑routing problem model for scheduled solid waste collection and route optimization using PSO algorithm. Waste Management, 71, 31–41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.wasman.2017.10.019
Zhou, Y., Luo, Q., Chen, H.‑W., He, A., & Wu, J. (2015). A discrete invasive weed optimization algorithm for solving traveling salesman problem. Neurocomputing, 151, 1227–1236. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neucom.2014.01.078
Laporte, G. (1992). The traveling salesman problem: An overview of exact and approximate algorithms. European Journal of Operational Research, 59(2), 231–247. https://doi.org/10.1016/0377-2217(92)90138-Y
Cordeau, J. F., Laporte, G., & Mercier, M. M. B. (2001). A unified tabu search heuristic for vehicle routing problems with time windows. Journal of the Operational Research Society, 52(8), 928–936. https://doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.jors.2601163
Berger, J., & Barkaoui, M. (2003). A hybrid genetic algorithm for the capacitated vehicle routing problem. In Genetic and Evolutionary Computation Conference (GECCO 2003), LNCS 2723 (pp. 646–656). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-45105-6_80
Ai, T. J., & Kachitvichyanukul, V. (2009). Particle swarm optimization and two solution representations for solving the capacitated vehicle routing problem. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 56(1), 380–387. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cie.2008.06.012
Foroutan Naddafi,M. (2024). A Novel Approach for Capacitated Vehicle Routing Using the Invasive Weed Optimization Algorithm. Transactions on Data Analysis in Social Science, 6(3), 140-151. doi: 10.47176/TDASS.2024.140
MLA
Foroutan Naddafi,M. . "A Novel Approach for Capacitated Vehicle Routing Using the Invasive Weed Optimization Algorithm", Transactions on Data Analysis in Social Science, 6, 3, 2024, 140-151. doi: 10.47176/TDASS.2024.140
HARVARD
Foroutan Naddafi M. (2024). 'A Novel Approach for Capacitated Vehicle Routing Using the Invasive Weed Optimization Algorithm', Transactions on Data Analysis in Social Science, 6(3), pp. 140-151. doi: 10.47176/TDASS.2024.140
CHICAGO
M. Foroutan Naddafi, "A Novel Approach for Capacitated Vehicle Routing Using the Invasive Weed Optimization Algorithm," Transactions on Data Analysis in Social Science, 6 3 (2024): 140-151, doi: 10.47176/TDASS.2024.140
VANCOUVER
Foroutan Naddafi M. A Novel Approach for Capacitated Vehicle Routing Using the Invasive Weed Optimization Algorithm. TDASS, 2024; 6(3): 140-151. doi: 10.47176/TDASS.2024.140