Robust dual sourcing inventory routing optimization for disaster relief.

Abstract

This paper considers the problem that a depot replenishes several shelters by aerial and land transportation modes for disaster relief. There are two distinguishing features of our problem: one is routing decisions determine replenishment lead times; the other is that we introduce dual sourcing policy into the inventory routing problem. A robust optimization model is proposed to determine the optimal replenishment quantity, replenishment mode, and transportation routes. Then, we decompose the problem into a routing master-problem and a set of inventory sub-problems. A tractable closed-form solution for sub-problem is derived. We further develop an adaptive large neighborhood search algorithm to solve the problem. To demonstrate the feasibility of the algorithm, we conduct a series of numerical experiments on the benchmark test suite with different scales and compare the performance of the proposed algorithm with a genetic algorithm.