Online Optimization For The Real-time Scheduling Of The Hazardous Materials Transportation

Hazardous Material, which is called Hazmat for short, is a kind ofgoods which are dangerous to human, facility, and environment becauseof the properties of poison, corrosion, explosion, combustion, andcombustion. The hazmat transportation is different from the generaltransportation because of its inherent characteristic of risk. Therefore, thescheduling for the hazmat transportation is different from the generaltransportation. Generally speaking, the probability of occurrence for thehazmat transportation is small, while the consequences is huge, which caninfluence the inhabitant and environment around, and cause huge losses.That is to say, the hazmat transportation incident is a kind of accidentswith serious consequences. So, the catastrophe avoidance should beconsidered in the scheduling and routing. In addition, due to their riskcharacteristics, hazmat is a kind of obnoxious material, so everyone don’twant the hazmat transportation vehicles to pass through the roads nearthem. That is the so called risk equity problem, which need to spread therisk over the whole network.In this thesis, the background of this problem is proposed firstly, and then, some related basic concepts and methods are introduced. Wediscuss the main content and significance of this study in the following.Based on the reviews, we use the online theory and competitive analysisto study the risk equity problem and the catastrophe avoidance problem.The main tasks are as follows:（1）using the catastrophe avoidance as the constrain, we construct amodel, and design an algorithm to solve this model. Finally, the algorithmis analyzed by the competitive method, and the competitive ratio isproved.（2）For the uncertainty of demands, we use the online theory toconstruct a model whose goal is to achieve the risk equity, and design antwo-step online algorithm. Finally, a competitive ratio is given.（3）Summarize the theory based on the above work.