Research Project:

An Integrated Systems Approach to the Development of Winter Maintenance / Management Systems

Final Report

PDF version 495 kb
HTML version 1 mb

Tech Transfer Summary 83 kb

Principal Investigator

James Noble
University of Missouri – Columbia
(573) 882-2692
noblej@missouri.edu

Project Objective

To develop an integrated system optimization-based approach to address asset management issues associated with both winter maintenance system design (i.e. sector design, fleet size, depot site location of equipment and materials) and winter maintenance system operations (i.e. vehicle routing and material inventory policies). This analysis will be conducted with respect to minimizing both the capital and operating costs associated with a winter maintenance system, while ensuring that desired service levels are maintained. Sub-objectives include:

Develop a city/county sector partitioning approach to determine the number of sectors that can be cleared concurrently.
Develop a protocol for determining the required level of service for each sector and/or route in a sector.
Develop a depot site location approach with respect to the specified sectors and time/capacity constraints for each site.
Develop an approach to determine the size and composition of the fleet and the amount of material inventory to carry with respect to sector and depot site specifications.
Develop an efficient and practical vehicle routing approach.

While the emphasis of this project is on “snow removal,” there is potential for application to a range of maintenance activities such as pavement striping, mowing and herbicide application.

Project Abstract

Winter road maintenance operations require many complex strategic and operational planning decisions. The five primary problems involved in this intricate planning procedure include locating depots, designing sectors, routing service vehicles, scheduling vehicles, and configuring the vehicle fleet. The complexity involved in each of these decisions has resulted mainly in research that approaches each of the problems separately and sequentially, which can lead to isolated and suboptimal solutions. After discussing the complexity of the relaxed subproblems that would need to be solved to optimize the intricate winter maintenance operations, the research turns to a heuristic approach to more feasibly address the interrelated problems.

This report subsequently presents a systematic, heuristic-based optimization approach to integrate the winter road maintenance planning decisions for depot location, sector design, vehicle route design, vehicle scheduling, and fleet configuration. The approach presented is illustrated through an example of public sector winter road maintenance planning for a rural transportation network in Boone County, Missouri.

When applied to the real-world winter road maintenance planning problems for Boone County, the methodology delivered very promising results. The solution methodology successfully achieves the objective of a more integrated and less sequential approach to the problems considered. The integrated solution would allow the Missouri Department of Transportation (MoDOT) to maintain the same high level of service with significantly fewer resources. The results indicate that this methodology is a successful step towards solving realistic multiple-depot problems involving heterogeneous winter maintenance fleets.

Task Descriptions, Milestone, and Dates

Assess current MoDOT Region 6 winter maintenance practices in order to determine realistic design and operating constraints (May 2005)
Develop protocol for determining detailed level of service requirements for each sector and/or route within a sector. Work in conjunction with MoDOT to validate protocol (May 2005)
Develop a model and solution procedure for the integrated sector design and site location problem (August 2005)
Develop an efficient vehicle routing algorithm for snow removal and disposal (November 2005)
Develop a model and solution procedure for the integrated fleet size / composition and material inventory location/quantity problem (January 2006)
Develop integration framework and supporting metaheuristics (February 2006)
Collect data from MoDOT Region 6 and test algorithms developed (June 2006)
Integrate this research with the GPS Real-Time Kinematic (RTK) reference station network for MoDOT District 6 (June 2006)
Write final project report and present results to MTC and MoDOT (August 2006)

Student Involvement (e.g., Thesis, Assistantships, Paid Employment)

None

Relationship to Other Projects

None

Technology Transfer Activities

The final report and other materials will be distributed or made accessible to other in and out of state agencies as appropriate.

Potential Benefits of the Project

This project will result in a service level determination protocol, model, algorithms, and code to solve winter maintenance problems, as well as an application framework, case study, and final report and presentation that will all be directly applicable to MoDOT Region 6 (St. Louis). There are also discussions ensuing regarding application to Cole, Boone and Jackson Counties in Missouri.

Budget

$51,712 MTC/ $58,265 Cost Share (18-month project)

TRB Keywords

Asset Management, System Optimization, Winter Maintenance, Snow Removal, Operations Management, Vehicle Routing, Fleet Management, Inventory Management, Order Quantity, Replenishment