A NEW-GENERATION OF VEHICLE-ROUTING RESEARCH - ROBUST ALGORITHMS, ADDRESSING UNCERTAINTY

In recent years new insights and algorithms have been obtained for the classical, deterministic vehicle routing problem as well as for natur al stochastic and dynamic variations of it. These new developments are based on theoretical analysis, combine probabilistic and combinatoria l modeling, and lead to new algorithms that produce near-optimal solut ions, and a deeper understanding of uncertainty issues in vehicle rout ing. In this paper, we survey these new developments with an emphasis on the insights gained and on the algorithms proposed.