Integrating fluctuations into distribution of resources in transportation networks

TL;DR

This paper introduces a resource distribution strategy for transportation networks that incorporates load fluctuations to optimize travel times, especially under resource scarcity and network heterogeneity.

Contribution

It presents a novel fluctuation-integrated resource distribution method that improves travel times without increasing computational complexity.

Findings

Shorter average travel times compared to previous strategies.

Maintains robustness while optimizing resource use.

Effective in networks with scarce resources and heterogeneity.

Abstract

We propose a resource distribution strategy to reduce the average travel time in a transportation network given a fixed generation rate. Suppose that there are essential resources to avoid congestion in the network as well as some extra resources. The strategy distributes the essential resources by the average loads on the vertices and integrates the fluctuations of the instantaneous loads into the distribution of the extra resources. The fluctuations are calculated with the assumption of unlimited resources, where the calculation is incorporated into the calculation of the average loads without adding to the time complexity. Simulation results show that the fluctuation-integrated strategy provides shorter average travel time than a previous distribution strategy while keeping similar robustness. The strategy is especially beneficial when the extra resources are scarce and the network is heterogeneous and lowly loaded.