An Analytical Model to Evaluate Alternative Methods for Distance Calculation in GIS-Based Vehicle Routing Decision Support Systems

Most commercial vehicle-routing decision support systems employ network optimization methods for calculating inter-stop distances over digital street data. Although potentially more accurate, these optimization methods are computationally intensive, increase overall problem complexity and require more sophisticated and expensive GIS systems to support the functions. Alternative approaches for calculating inter-stop street distances have been re-emerging in the literature as software developers seek to increase efficiency when solving these types of complex problems allowing larger problems to be solved in real-time. This research in progress describes an analytical model to determine if approximation methods are comparable, in terms of the quality of solutions generated, to computationally expensive optimization methods which have been generally adopted by software vendors.