Vehicle routing problems, among the most studied in combinatorial optimization, arise in many practical contexts (freight distribution and collection, transportation, garbage collection, newspaper delivery, etc.). Operations researchers have made significant developments in the algorithms for their solution, and Vehicle Routing: Problems, Methods, and Applications, Second Edition reflects these advances. The text of the new edition is either completely new or significantly revised and provides extensive and complete state-of-the-art coverage of vehicle routing by those who have done most of the innovative research in the area; it emphasizes methodology related to specific classes of vehicle routing problems and, since vehicle routing is used as a benchmark for all new solution techniques, contains a complete overview of current solutions to combinatorial optimization problems. It also includes several chapters on important and emerging applications, such as disaster relief and green vehicle routing.

Audience: This book is intended for both researchers and graduate level students in operations research and applied mathematics. Practitioners will find this book particularly useful. Readers need a basic knowledge of the main methods for the solution of combinatorial optimization problems.

Contents: Chapter 1: The Family of Vehicle Routing Problems; Part I: The Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem; Chapter 2: Classical Exact Algorithms for the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem; Chapter 3: New Exact Algorithms for the Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem; Chapter 4: Heuristics for the Vehicle Routing Problem; Part II: Important Variants of the Vehicle Routing Problem; Chapter 5: The Vehicle Routing Problem with Time Windows; Chapter 6: Pickup-and-Delivery Problems for Goods Transportation; Chapter 7: Pickup-and-Delivery Problems for People Transportation; Chapter 8: Stochastic Vehicle Routing Problems; Chapter 9: Four Variants of the Vehicle Routing Problem; Chapter 10: Vehicle Routing Problems with Profits; Chapter 11: Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problems; Part III: Applications of the Vehicle Routing Problem; Chapter 12: Software Tools and Emerging Technologies for Vehicle Routing and Intermodal Transportation; Chapter 13: Ship Routing and Scheduling in Industrial and Tramp Shipping; Chapter 14: Vehicle Routing Applications in Disaster Relief; Chapter 15: Green Vehicle Routing.