Ride-Sharing Matching under Travel Time Uncertainty through A Data-Driven Robust Optimization Approach

In this paper, we propose a data-driven robust optimization model to reduce total travel cost in ride-sharing systems under travel time uncertainty. Instead of using a pre-defined uncertainty set, we study a data-driven robust optimization approach that integrates gated recurrent units (GRUs) predictions with a one-stage robust optimization model. The proposed approach has the ability to compute high quality solutions by leveraging the large-scale historical data to derive the uncertainty set for the designed robust optimization model. To evaluate the proposed approach, we conduct a group of simulations based on the New York taxi trip record data sets. The validation results show that our data-driven robust optimization approach outperforms the robust optimization approach with a pre-defined uncertainty set in terms of travellers' total travel cost. Most importantly, the total travel cost under the proposed approach is reduced by up to 31.7%, and by 26.7% on average compared with the robust model with a pre-defined uncertainty set.