A review of approaches to modeling applied vehicle routing problems

TL;DR

This paper reviews various modeling approaches for vehicle routing problems, emphasizing the importance of accurate domain representation and evaluating methods based on practical criteria, while highlighting future research directions.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of modeling methods for VRP and proposes evaluation criteria aligned with practical optimization needs.

Findings

Comparison criteria for modeling approaches

Identification of key modeling challenges

Discussion of future research directions

Abstract

Due to the practical importance of vehicle routing problems (VRP), there exists an ever-growing body of research in algorithms and (meta)heuristics for solving such problems. However, the diversity of VRP domains creates the separate problem of modeling such problems -- describing the domain entities (and, in particular, the planning decisions), the set of valid planning decisions, and the preferences between different plans. In this paper, we review the approaches for modeling vehicle routing problems. To make the comparison more straightforward, we formulate several criteria for evaluating modeling methods reflecting the practical requirements of the development of optimization algorithms for such problems. Finally, as a result of this comparison, we discuss several future research avenues in the field of modeling VRP domains.