Two-echelon Multi-trip Vehicle Routing Problem with Synchronization for An Integrated Water- and Land-based Transportation System

This study considers an integrated water- and land-based transportation (IWLT) system for waste collection. Research on the issue is motivated by increased heavy street movements that damage quay walls as well as congestion. We present a novel two-echelon vehicle routing problem with satellite synchronization based on a two-index formulation and evaluate it on small-sized instances for 10 waste points and 4 hubs. We compare the proposed synchronized IWLT approach with three benchmarks that can reduce issues associated with heavy loads. It is shown that the proposed system can provide better solutions with less collection cost, reduced street movements and lightweight garbage vehicles.