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https://nap.nationalacademies.org/catalog/27432/critical-issues-in-transportation-for-2024-and-beyond

Strategic Analysis of Snow Routes

This proposal will develop mathematical optimization models to perform an analysis of existing snow routes for selected neighborhoods in Rhode Island. The scope of these decisions will include stockpile operations, fuel depots and equipment to make more efficient operations decisions, and will use the models for this analysis with data obtained by observation, transfer and discussion from the Rhode Island Department of Transportation (RIDOT). This research seeks to extend the work done previously at the University of Rhode Island (URI) on decision making using operations research methodologies to perform an analysis and design of existing snow routes, stockpile operations, fuel depots and equipment to make more efficient operations decisions. The modeling issues of particular interest for this study are: (1) A set of linear/integer programming based models for constructing solutions which are optimal locations for sites and equipment. Large scale solution approaches including distributed solution approaches involving multiple CPUs in client/server relationships. (2) A simulation based model for determining operations improvements, including ant-colony methods for improving the solutions obtained using optimization.