Solving Transport Problems

9Optimization in Multilevel Green Transportation Problems with Electrical Vehicles

Research on transport problems is widely undertaken due to its practical importance. The use of electric vehicles is being stimulated by governments and, thus, new issues are appearing. Recently, the scientific community has also been considering environmental aspects in transportation optimization problems. The main challenges include, the construction planning of all the infrastructure required to adopt electric vehicles in the transportation systems and the route optimization with capacity battery constraints. As different agents are involved (government, users, etc.), and each of them aims to solve its particular optimization problem whilst considering the other solutions, a multilevel optimization problem rises. A review and a general analysis of green transportation problems involving electric vehicles and modeled as multilevel optimization problems are presented in this chapter.

9.1. Introduction

Although research on transport problems is vast and covers several characteristics, such as fleet type (homogeneous/heterogeneous), time window, number of depots, and so on, only recently has the scientific community started to consider environmental aspects in transport models. In this new context, with regard to combustion vehicles, issues related to the emission of pollutants are the main focus and can be treated according to the type of fuel used, speed along the route, energy efficiency ...