Optimal multistage expansion of medium-voltage power network because of load growth is a common issue in electrical distribution planning. Minimizing total cost of the objective function with technical constraints, make it a combinatorial problem which should be solved by optimization algorithms. In this paper, a new improved hybrid Tabu Search/ Particle Swarm Optimization algorithm is proposed...

Humanitarian organizations pre-position relief items in pre-disaster and distribute them to the affected areas in post-disaster. Improper planning of emergency operations causes more deaths in post-disaster. In this paper, the problem of relief item pre-positioning and multi-period distribution planning is addressed considering lateral transhipment among distribution centres to improve the effi...

The main role of conservation planning is to design reserve networks to protect biodiversity in situ. Research within the field of conservation planning has focused on the development of theories and tools to design reserve networks that protect biodiversity in an efficient and representative manner. Whilst much progress has been made in this regard, there has been limited assessment of the sen...

In this paper a new method is introduced for path planning of an autonomous vehicle. In this method, the environment is considered cluttered and with some uncertainty sources. Thus, the state of detected object should be estimated using an optimal filter. To do so, the state distribution is assumed Gaussian. Thus the state vector is estimated by a Kalman filter at each time step. The estimation...

Water distribution systems are complex interconnected networks that require extensive planning and maintenance to ensure that the drinking water is delivered to the consumers. Lack of adequate water supply in urban areas is due to aging water distribution systems and inadequate maintenance of this critical infrastructure (Bhave 2003). The reliability of such deteriorating systems is continually...

Production-distribution planning is the most important activity in supply chain management (SCM). To solve this planning problem, either analytic or simulation approaches have been used. However these two approaches have their own demerits in problem solving. In this paper, we propose a hybrid approach which is a specific problem solving procedure combining analytic and simulation methods to so...

One of the basic obstacles in the deployment of clean technologies such as wind turbines or PV modules is their intermittent nature due to dependency on the wind speed and solar radiance. In fact, the authors in this paper aim to investigate the effect of clean technologies such as wind turbines and PV modules on the total and individual costs of the distribution system. In order to model the u...