1 Dynamic Vehicle Routing

Centre de recherche sur les transports and D epartement d'informatique et de recherche op erationnelle, Abstract: Dynamic vehicle routing and dispatching refers to a wide range of problems where information on the problem is revealed to the decision maker concurrently with the determination of the solution. These problems have recently emerged as an active area of research due to recent technological advances that allow real-time information to be quickly obtained and processed. There are probably as many variants of these problems as there are real-world applications. After a brief overview of this broad domain, the paper will then focus on problems motivated by courier services and demand responsive transportation systems. These systems typically evolve within a local service area over a relatively short period of time (typically, a few hours), thus putting stringent response time requirements on the decision maker. They are also characterized by a strong routing component: many tasks can be allocated at once to the same vehicle and these tasks must be appropriately sequenced. The paper surveys relevant work in the scientiic literature on such problems, presents recent results and advances in our ongoing research eeorts, and proposes open directions for future research.