Title: A parallel hybrid ant-tabu algorithm for integrated emergency vehicle dispatching and covering problem

Authors: Sarah Ibri, Habiba Drias, Mustapha Nourelfath

Addresses: Departement d'Informatique, Universite Hassiba Benbouali de Chlef (UHBC), hay Essalam, Chlef, Algerie. ' Departement d'Informatique, Universite des Sciences et de la Technologie Houari Boumediene (USTHB), BP32 El Alia Bab Ezzouar, Alger, 16111 Algerie. ' Departement de Genie Mecanique, Centre Interuniversitaire de Recherche sur les Reseaux d'Entreprise, la Logistique et le Transport (CIRRELT), Universite Laval, Pavillon Adrien-Pouliot, Quebec (Quebec) G1K7P4, Canada

Abstract: In this paper we propose, implement and analyse a parallel solution to solve an integrated dispatching and covering problem for emergency vehicle fleet management system. The basic sequential algorithm is a coupled ant colony system (ACS) with tabu search heuristic. To speed up this algorithm, we develop a master slave ACS parallel version based on the parallel neighbourhood evaluation approach for the tabu procedure. In experiments we compare synchronisation strategies between the parallel processes and show the impact of inter processes communication frequency and the information exchanged on the efficiency of the algorithm.

Keywords: parallel algorithms; emergency vehicle planning; ant colony optimisation; ACO; tabu search; real time; emergency vehicles; emergency vehicle dispatching; emergency vehicle covering; emergency vehicle fleet management.

DOI: 10.1504/IJICA.2010.036810

International Journal of Innovative Computing and Applications, 2010 Vol.2 No.4, pp.226 - 236

Published online: 09 Nov 2010 *

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