Network Design with Applications to Transportation and Logistics

This book explores the methodological and application developments of network design in transportation and logistics. It identifies trends, challenges and research perspectives in network design for these areas. Network design is a major class of problems in operations research where network flow, combinatorial and mixed integer optimization meet. The analysis and planning of transportation and logistics systems continues to be one of the most important application areas of operations research. Networks provide the natural way of depicting such systems, so the optimal design and operation of networks is the main methodological area of operations research that is used for the analysis and planning of these systems. This book defines the current state of the art in the general area of network design, and then turns to its applications to transportation and logistics. New research challenges are addressed.

Network Design with Applications to Transportation and Logistics is divided into three parts. Part I examines basic design problems including fixed-cost network design and parallel algorithms. After addressing the basics, Part II focuses on more advanced models. Chapters cover topics such as multi-facility network design, flow-constrained network design, and robust network design. Finally Part III is dedicated entirely to the potential application areas for network design. These areas range from rail networks, to city logistics, to energy transport. All of the chapters are written by leading researchers in the field, which should appeal to analysts and planners.

Teodor Gabriel Crainic is Professor of Operations Research, Transportation, and Logistics and the NSERC Industrial Research Chair in Logistics Management at the School of Business Administration of the Université du Québec à Montréal (Canada). He is adjunct Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research of the Université de Montréal and the Department of Economics and Business Administration of the Molde University College, Norway.
Michel Gendreau is Professor of Operations Research at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Industrial Engineering of École Polytechnique de Montréal (Canada), where he holds the NSERC/Hydro-Québec Chair on the Stochastic Optimization of Electricity Generation. His main research area is the application of operations research to energy, transportation and telecommunication planning.
Bernard Gendron is a Professor at the Department of Computer Science and Operations Research at the University of Montréal (Canada). His research interests include integer and combinatorial optimization, large-scale optimization and parallel computing, and location and network design problems applied to transportation logistics and telecommunications.