Journal of Cleaner Production 258 (2020) 120661

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Journal of Cleaner Production

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/jclepro

Hierarchical optimization of green routing for mobile advertisement

vehicle
G. Poonthalir *, R. Nadarajan , M. Senthil Kumar
Department of Applied Mathematics and Computational Sciences, PSG College of Technology, Coimbatore, India

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Greenhouse gas emission in transport sector is a major problem with its harmful effects on environment
Received 15 November 2018 and population. This paper proposes to devise green routing solution for Mobile Advertisement Vehicle
Received in revised form (MAV). The objective of the problem is to minimize route cost and carbon emission under time
14 February 2020
dependent speed constraint. The problem is modelled with hierarchical optimization and is solved in
Accepted 18 February 2020
stages. This paper also highlights the idling emission estimation and its impact on the total emission. The
Available online 22 February 2020
problem is solved using Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization (HPSO) and the minimum cost routes
Handling Editor: Bin Chen obtained are improved using local exchange operator to minimize emission. The model is tested on a
case study of mobile advertisement vehicle which produces minimum emission routes.
Keywords: © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Green logistics
Carbon emission
Fuel emission
Vehicle routing problem

1. Introduction
In recent years, greenhouse gases and emission of carbon-di-
oxide (co2 ) contribute much to the global warming. Green logis-
tics have gained importance as it focuses on the effect of harmful
gases, in particular co2 on the environment and strives to minimize
the effect. Carbon emission also aggravates environmental prob-
lems (Fathollohi-Fard and Hajighaei-Keshteli, 2018a; 2018b). The
harmful emissions from exhaust engines pose risk to both popu-
lation and environment as studied by Donaldson et al. (2001) and
Ris (2007). Green logistics aim to minimize the toxic effects of ve-
hicles on the environment without compromising economic con-
siderations. Several organizations have taken the initiative for
minimizing pollution. Out of all GHG’s, co2 contributes the major
part and is emitted equivalent to the fuel consumption as stated by
Kirby et al. (2000). Designing a logistic solution focusing these is-
sues is both challenging and rewarding. A class of problems that
address the distribution of goods to customers using delivery ve-
hicles are studied under Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP).
This paper intends to introduce a routing problem with the kind
of vehicles which are not part of any distribution logistics or public
transport system and which are not dealt with in the literature.
* Corresponding author.
E-mail address: poonthalirk@gmail.com (G. Poonthalir).
Since these vehicles are also responsible for pollution through
emission, the planning and routing difficulties of these vehicles are
taken as a case study with an aim to devise a green routing solution.
The vehicle chosen for this study is Mobile Advertisement Vehicle
(MAV).
Mobile Advertisement Vehicle (MAV) is a dedicated, customized
truck with narrow bodies for posting the advertisement. This form
of advertisement is gaining attention in India, as many govern-
ments impose strict rules on static billboards. A typical example of
MAV is shown in Fig. 1a.
The task of each MAV is to move around and halt at specific
identified station to seek the attention of people. Each vehicle has a
time limit within which it finishes the trip. The vehicle is expected
to visit all stations, within the limited fleet available. As there is a
limited collection of homogenous vehicle fleet, when the vehicle
runs out of fuel it is refuelled in the nearby refuelling station. Since
the work studies the planning and routing difficulties of MAV, the
problem can be stated as Mobile Advertisement Vehicle Routing
Problem (MAVRP). Fig. 1b shows a sample route using three MAVs
to plan a route with nine halting stations and two refuelling sta-
tions. The route includes halts in between for refuelling.
MAVRP is similar to the study of Green VRP (G-VRP) proposed by
Erdogan and Miller Hooks (2012). The difference exists in model-
ling and solving the problem with an additional objective of co2
emission minimization where the routing decision of MAVRP is

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2020.120661
0959-6526/© 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
2 G. Poonthalir et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 258 (2020) 120661
Fig. 1a. Mobile advertisement vehicle.
influenced by a time varying speed constraint. The motivation
behind this research is to emphasize that emission in any form of
transportation is not good and tolerable. Though mobile adver-
tisement vehicle is not used to carry people or part of any distri-
bution logistics, emission from these vehicles are a threat and
should be addressed. Hence it is necessary to devise an environ-
mental friendly routing for these vehicles. The proposed problem,
MAVRP, has speed as a parameter which is dependent on time and
can be categorised under Time Dependent VRP (TDVRP). When
compared to classical VRP, TDVRP is hard to solve. Since MAVRP is
modelled as a bi objective optimization problem with objectives as
route cost and carbon emission minimization, with a time depen-
dent speed constraint, the difficulty of the problem increases.
Hence the problem is solved using hierarchical optimization.
This study is the first to highlight the importance to analyze
these kinds of entertainment vehicles and further research is
required to identify and account these vehicles to ensure emission
free routing or to have less impact on the environment. In general,
for solving any complicated optimization problem, the existing
papers in the literature can be categorised into three groups as,
improving the optimization model with more elements from real-
world applications, improving the current solution approaches and
proposing novel solution algorithms (Fathollahi-Fard and
Hajiaghaei-Keshteli, 2018a, 2018b; Fatholahi-Fard et al., 2018a,
2018b; Sahebjamnia et al., 2018). Based on these, the contribution
of this paper is three fold, to propose a hierarchical optimization
Fig. 1b. Routing of mobile advertisement vehicle.
model that solves MAVRP under a time varying speed constraint, to
propose hybrid particle swarm optimization to solve MAVRP and to
propose idling emission estimation using regression.
MAVRP is solved in two phases. In the first phase, the problem is
solved with an objective to minimize route cost and in the second
phase, the obtained routes are improved for less emission. Another
important improvement in the modelling is the inclusion of idle
fuel emission. Since no concrete methods are available for calcu-
lating idling emission, this paper proposes the use of regression
using a sample of real time data to determine idling emission. Idling
emission arise when the engine of a vehicle is run while the vehicle
is stationery. Idling of vehicles is a serious issue and the fuel
consumed during 10 min of idling per day is more than 27 gallons
of fuel per year. As the percentage of carbon emission is directly
proportional to the fuel consumed, idling emission estimation
should also be taken into account in calculating emission from
vehicles. Brodrick et al., 2002 and Berg, 1996 have studied the
impact of idling and engine tends to consume more fuel while
idling.
MAVRP addresses a special kind of vehicle. Though it is an
extension of VRP, it includes additional constraint and objective and
the vehicle comes under entertainment vehicle category. The main
objective is to analyze the impact of emission on the environment.
The emission levels of these vehicles are to be severely monitored
and heavy penalty should be issued. The main contribution of this
paper is to categorize these vehicles and to analyze their impact on
emission.
2. Literature review
Elaborate descriptions of various methodologies in green lo-
gistics can be found in Sbihi and Eglese (2010). A detailed review on
vehicle routing with environmental concern is available in Lin et al.
(2014).
Literature on fuel emission are considered from two different
perspectives as specified in Qian and Eglese (2016) and the problem
is classified based on time independent and time dependent con-
straints. As fuel consumption and emission are directly related
(Kirby et al., 2000), minimizing fuel consumption minimizes fuel
emission.
When minimization of fuel emission is considered from time
 G. Poonthalir et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 258 (2020) 120661
independent constraints, Suzuki (2011) discussed a truck routing
problem for emission minimization. They found that when heavier
loads are delivered first, emission is greatly minimized since load is
a crucial constraint in determining emission. Bektas and Laporte
(2011) proposed Pollution Routing Problem (PRP) as an extension
of Classical VRPTW. They presented an integer linear programming
formulation of the problem to minimize the route cost where load
and speed are influential parameters. Later, PRP was solved by
Demir et al. (2012) using Adaptive Large Neighbourhood Search
(ALNS) where initial routes are constructed using fixed speed and
improved using a speed optimization Algorithm with an objective
to minimize fuel consumption. The problem was extended by
Demir et al. (2014a) where the conflicting objectives of emission
and driving time minimization are modelled as a bi objective
optimization problem.
Emission minimization VRP (EVRP) with time windows was
studied by Wygonik and Goodchild (2011) to minimize fuel con-
sumption in urban pickup and delivery system that lead to less
emission and their analysis is focussed on uncongested traffic data.
Carbon and idling emission estimation for vehicles in Green Vehicle
Routing Problem (G-VRP) using air/fuel mixture ratio was discussed
in Poonthalir et al. (2016).
Time dependent VRP operate on several influential factors that
depend on time. Major factors are speed and time of travel. Apaydin
and Gonullu (2008) studied the impact of route optimization on
waste collection trucks to reduce harmful gas emission which
depend on varying time and cost of travel. Kuo (2010) proposed
time dependent VRP where the fuel consumption is dependent on
speed, time and load of the vehicle. Fuel emission minimization for
VRP was proposed by Qian and Eglese (2016) where speed is taken
as decision variable. They proposed a column generation based
tabu search to solve the problem.
A green routing was proposed on a one-to-one pickup and de-
livery problem by Soysal et al. (2018) and several factors like fuel
consumption, varying speed, road categorization are taken for
optimal routing. Jabali et al. (2012) discussed a Time Dependent
VRP (TDVRP) and studied the impact of speed on the amount of co2
emitted. They investigated that, when vehicle travel in congestion,
they emit more with decreased speed. Kopfer et al. (2014) studied
the impact of heterogeneous vehicles on fuel consumption and
emission. Maden et al. (2010) solved a vehicle routing and sched-
uling problem with time windows where speed is dependent on
the time of travel.
Franceschetti et al. (2013) contributed Time Dependent PRP
with traffic congestion in PRP. Kramer et al. (2015) developed a
speed and departure time optimization Algorithm for PRP that aims
to devise minimum emission route. Their model considers the
vehicle arrival and departure time as decision variables. Their al-
gorithm works by running a speed and departure time optimization
algorithm on a route which finds an optimal departure time and
optimal speed for the arcs.
A non linear mixed integer programming problem for VRP that
aim to minimize GHG emission is carried out by Zhou and Lee
(2017) with several realistic constraints like vehicle speed, rolling
resistance, air density etc., and solutions are constructed using
Lagrangian relaxation. Kazemian and Aref (2017) presented a VRP
with time windows under time dependent environment where
speed varies with different time of a day. A simulated annealing
approach was used to solve problem. A time dependent VRP to
minimize cost and emission is given by Heni et al. (2018) by
considering dynamic paths. They proposed a nearest neighbour
improvement heuristic that considers a time dependent quickest
path method to solve the problem.
The Algorithm proposed by Zhang et al. (2015) is used to find a
route that has minimum fuel cost, carbon emission cost and fuel
3
usage cost. They solved the problem using improved tabu search.
Their model consists in building a route by varying the load and
speed with client sequence and devise routes with reasonable
speed. A time dependent Vehicle Routing and Scheduling problem
with carbon emission was proposed by Xiao and Konak (2017) and
is solved using two phases, a routing phase and a scheduling phase.
In the first phase, the routing decision is made to verify whether the
arc is travelled between i and j in time period h. The scheduling
phase determines when to travel the selected arcs to optimize the
route.
Androutsopoulos and Zografos (2017) solved a Bi objective Load
and Time dependent VRP with time windows (BTL-VRPTW) under
time dependent traffic conditions. The objectives aim to minimize
total travel time and fuel consumption.
Estimate of emission for Green Vehicle Routing and Scheduling
Problem (GVRSP) under time varying traffic congestion was studied
by Xiao and Konak (2015). A Fuel efficient Green Vehicle Routing
Problem (F-GVRP) was proposed by Poonthalir and Nadarajan
(2018) with varying speed constraint to minimize both route cost
fuel consumption using goal programming.
Figliozzi (2010) proposed Emission Minimization VRP (EVRP)
with a time varying speed constraint where along with route cost,
emission is taken as an objective for optimization. Fukasawa et al.
(2016) introduced Energy Minimizing CVRP (EMVRP) which is a
variant of capacitated VRP where the arc between any two nodes
represents the product of the distance and weight of the vehicle
with an asymmetric distance matrix. Each vehicle starts with a
weight and picks up load from customer. Two different formula-
tions of the problem are presented, arc load formulation and set
partitioning formulation which are solved using branch and cut and
branch and price respectively.
Niu et al. (2018) have described a Green Open VRPTW
(GOVRPTW). Their objective function includes fuel emission cost
and driver wages cost. After determining the route, a speed opti-
mization procedure is run to find the optimal speed for the routes
which is used to minimize the emission cost.
The modelling of MAVRP is similar to the modelling approaches
used by Figliozzi (2010), Xiao and Konak (2015) and Ubeda et al.
(2011). Figliozzi (2010) suggested two different formulations for
EVRP. The first formulation is called total cost minimization EVRP
which is constructed as a joint objective function that minimizes
the route cost, cost of vehicles, route duration and emission. The
second formulation considers the hierarchical approach called as
partial cost minimization EVRP where the primary objective is to
minimize cost of vehicles, secondary objective is to minimize
emission and the ternary objective is route cost minimization and
duration costs. For partial EVRP, the routes are optimized and the
obtained routes are re optimized to find minimum emission routes.
Heuristic was developed to minimize emission and the impact of
congestion on emission was studied.
Xiao and Konak (2015) modelled Green Vehicle Routing and
Scheduling problem (GVRSP) with weighted tardiness which is
considered with traffic congestion. The problem is solved using
hierarchical optimization. An MILP formulation of the problem with
hierarchical objectives was proposed that concentrated in mini-
mizing carbon emission, arrival time and the total time travelled on
road. The problem is solved sequentially where the routes are
constructed first and then optimized with the distance travelled in
each time period.
Ubeda et al. (2011) proposed to devise a green routing solution
for a Spanish food distribution sector called Eroski. The problem
was solved hierarchically in two phases. Initially an optimal route
was constructed and then are optimized for minimizing emission.
They used distance based approach for calculating emission.
Several variants of VRPs are modelled with hierarchical
4 G. Poonthalir et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 258 (2020) 120661

objective. Some of them are, solving VRP with Time Windows
(VRPTW) (Lau et al., 2003) using the standard two phase procedure
where initial solution was obtained using construction heuristics
and an improvement procedure is run to improve the routes,
solving an open VRP (Marinakis and Marinaki, 2011) with hierar-
chical objectives. Initially the number of vehicles was minimized
and then the route cost is minimized. Kim et al. (2013) solved a
Vehicle Routing and Scheduling Problem (VRSP) using hierarchical
objectives using genetic Algorithm to minimize travel time and
installation of vehicles.
Based on the complexity of the proposed model MAVRP and the
priorities of the objectives, the problem is solved in phases using
hierarchical optimization instead of joint optimization
(Androutsopoulos and Zografos (2017); Fukasawa et al. (2016);
Kramer et al. (2015); Niu et al. (2018); Xiao and Konak (2017);
Zhang et al. (2015)). When the defined objectives are integrated
into a single objective using joint optimization, considerable time is
spent in checking the constraints that satisfies all objectives, also all
possible combinations of time for the entire time period need to be
determined and it is time consuming to find an optimal route with
less emission. Hence the problem is modelled using hierarchical
optimization which is a traditional way of modelling a complex
problem by breaking down into sub problems. A summary of the
works carried out in fuel consumption and emission minimization
on various models of vehicle routing problem are presented in
Table 1 which shows the difference between the proposed model
and other models in the literature.
The main similarities between the existing works in the litera-
ture are, to address and solve a vehicle routing problem with
environmental objectives and constraints. The key difference is in
modelling the problem with different objectives and constraints
and with the use of different meta heuristics. The main differences
between the proposed model and the models already existing in
the literature are summarized below,

Developing a model to solve a problem for entertainment ve-
hicles where these vehicles are not used in distribution logistics
or public transport system.

These entertainment vehicles are not discussed in the literature.

The problem is modelled to minimize emission which includes
halts for refuelling

Most of the papers discussed in literature do not halt at the
fueling station en route.

MAVRP is a variation of G-VRP proposed by Erdogan and Miller
Hooks(2011)

This paper proposes a method to account this idling emission.
In order to fill the above mentioned literature gap and to study
the impact of emission from MAVRP, the problem is modelled with
hierarchical optimization and solved using HPSO. Hence the pro-
posed model is used to fill the gaps that are detailed here.

Table 1
Review of previous works.

Reference Problem Category Time Refuelling Objective Function Idling

Halts emission

Suzuki (2011) VRP TSPTW time independent No Emission minimization No

constraints
Kuo (2010) TDVRP VRP Time dependent No Fuel consumption e
Figliozzi (2010) Emission minimization VRPTW Time dependent No Route cost, emission, vehicle cost, total duration No
VRP
Bektas and Laporte (2011) PRP VRPTW time independent No Driver cost, operational cost, emission cost No
constraints
Wygonik and Goodchild (2011) Emission minimization VRPPD Time independent No Minimize fuel consumption e
VRP constraints
Jabali et al. (2012) TDVRP VRP Time dependent No Fuel consumption, driver cost, fuel emission No
Franceschetti et al. (2013) TDPRP VRPTW Time dependent No Emission cost, driver wages No
Zhang et al. (2014) EVRP CVRP Time independent No Route cost, carbon emission No
Xiao and Konak (2015) GVRSP VRPTW Time dependent No Emission, customer satisfaction, travel time and No
distance
Zhang et al. (2015) Low carbon routing VRP Time independent No Fuel cost, emission cost and fuel usage cost No
model constraints
Qian and Eglese(2016) Road network VRP Time dependent No Fuel emission No
Kazemian and Aref (2017) CVRP CVRP Time dependent No Fuel consumption, emission No
Soysal et al. (2018) G-VRPPD VRPPD Time independent No Fuel consumption, route cost No
Androutsopoulos and Zografos VRSP VRP Time dependent No Travel time, fuel consumption No
(2017)
Poonthalir et al. (2015) F-GVRP G-VRP Time independent Yes Route cost, fuel consumption No
Heni et al. (2018) TDVRP VRPTW Time dependent No Route cost, Emission No
Fathallohi Fard et al. (2018b) Green Home Health VRPTW Time independent No Route cost, Emission No
Care
Zhang et al. (2018) GVSRP VRPTW Time dependent No Emission, driver wages No
Da Costa et al. (2018) GVRP CVRP Time independent No Route cost, emission No
Proposed Work MAVRP G-VRP Time dependent Yes Route cost, fuel emission Yes

VRP- Vehicle Routing Problem.

VRPTW-VRP with Time Windows.
TSPTW- Travelling Salesman Problem with Time Windows.
PRP-Pollution Routing Problem.
G-VRP-Green Vehicle Routing Problem.
F-GVRP-Fuel efficient Green VRP.
TDVRP-Time Dependent VRP.
TDPRP-Time Dependent Pollution Routing Problem.
GVSRP e Green Vehicle Scheduling and Routing Problem.
VRPPD-VRP with Pickup and Delivery.
 G. Poonthalir et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 258 (2020) 120661 5

3. Methodology Table 2
Parameters used in MEET for different class of vehicle weight.

3.1. Hierarchical optimization Weight(wt) K A B c d e F

3:5 < wt  7:5 110 0 0 0.000375 8702 0 0

In hierarchical optimization, each objective function is opti- 7:5 < wt  16 871 16.0 0.143 0 0 32031 0
mized separately and a new constraint that depends on the other 16 < wt  32 765 7.04 0 0.000632 8334 0 0
objective function is added in each step and solved in hierarchy. For wt > 32 1576 17.6 0 0.00117 0 36067 0

MAVRP, initial feasible routes are obtained and are re-optimized to

minimize emission. Since the routes are optimal, by iterating it
using local exchange operator a minimum emission route is has a number of fixed and predefined parameters for vehicles in the
obtained. weight range of 3.5e32 tonnes. For vehicles weighing less than 3.5
In MAVRP, traffic congestion is dependent on the time period tonnes, fuel consumption is estimated using
and, it has a major influence on the route construction. Compared Em ¼ 0:0617n2  7:8227n þ 429:51 where Em is emission factor
to traditional VRP, as congestion and time are inter-related, solving that determines the amount of carbon-di-oxide in gms/km. Eqn (1)
a problem with these constraints are hard. Hence the problem is is used to calculate emission for an unloaded vehicle with zero road
first solved to find an optimal route in phase one. The quality of the gradients.
solution is dependent on the obtained routes.
d e f
Em ¼ K þ aV þ bV 2 þ cV 3 þ þ þ (1)
V V2 V3
3.2. Emission estimation models
Here, V is the average vehicle speed and a; b; c; d; e; f and K are
Measuring and reducing emission require an estimate on the parameters as given in Table 2.
level of co2 that is released. Many emission estimation models are To compute the total emission E, eqn. (2) is used,
specified in literature and no standard is available on the use of a
specific model as it is chosen based on the problem. Many of the E ¼ Em  tot dist (2)
emission models described in Demir et al. (2011) computes emis-
sion based on some of the vehicle specific constraints like accel- where tot dist is the total distance travelled.
eration, deceleration etc., and these calculations are influenced by As stated in Demir et al. (2014b), MEET uses a speed dependent
factors like the condition of vehicle, road condition etc., and hence regression equation for calculating fuel consumption. It was suc-
only an approximate emission estimation alone can be derived. This cessfully used by several researchers to measure emission. Kim
section describes two emission estimation models, namely distance et al. (2009) used MEET to calculate emission and reported the
based approach (Ubeda et al., 2011) and Methodology for calcu- relationship between transport cost and emission. Pan et al. (2013)
lating Transport Emission (MEET). This paper also analyzes the used MEET to calculate emission with real transportation data.
relevance in using MEET as an emission estimation method and They studied that a reduction in carbon emission can be realized by
proposes to derive a comparison between MEET and distance based pooling supply chain networks. Similarly Jabali et al. (2012);
approach discussed by Ubeda et al. (2011). Omidvar and Tavakkoli-Moghaddam (2012); Saberi and Verbas
(2012); Naderipour and Alinaghian (2016) have used MEET to
compute carbon emission.
3.2.1. Distance based approach
As detailed in Palmer (2007), research works concentrates in
estimating emission with either fuel based or distance based
approach. In fuel based approach, emission estimation is influenced 3.2.3. Idling emission estimation
by fuel type and is dependent on the type of fuel used, the amount As mentioned in Demir et al. (2011), the idle fuel consumption
of heat content and the fraction of fuel that is oxidized. In distance can be calculated as follows
based approach, emission is calculated based on the distance
Fidle ¼ D  idle time (3)
travelled by the vehicle (Ubeda et al., 2011). Algorithm 1 elaborates
the steps used to derive emission using distance based approach. It
where Fidle is the idle fuel consumption, D is the idle fuel rate and
is assumed that the entire fuel is burnt and is emitted as carbon-di-
idle time is idling time in seconds. But it is hard to find the idle fuel
oxide.
rate D and is dependent on many parameters like vehicle type, load,
Algorithm 1. speed etc.

3.2.2. Methodology for calculating transport emission and energy
consumption (MEET)
MEET is a successful method proposed by Hickman et al. (1999)
for estimating transport emission and energy consumption. It in-
cludes estimation functions where speed is given importance and
3.3. Phase 1: To minimize distance in Mobile Advertisement Vehicle
Routing Problem
MAVRP is defined on an undirected complete graph G ¼ ðV; EÞ
with vertices V and edges E connecting the vertices. The vertex set
6 G. Poonthalir et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 258 (2020) 120661

V is defined as V ¼ H∪F∪D, where H ¼ fH1 ; H2 ; :::; HN g is the set of From a halting station, a vehicle k2M can visit another halting
identified halting stations, F ¼ fF1 ; F2 ; :::; FS g is the set of refuelling station or depot or a refuelling station as given in eqn. (5). Eqn. (6)
centers where S < N and Dis the depot. F 0 is used to keep track of specifies that from a refuelling station, the vehicle can visit either a
several visits to each refuelling station F. Hence V 0 ¼ H∪ F 0 ∪ D. A halting station or a depot and not another refuelling station. Eqn.
fleet of M homogenous vehicles are available at the depot each with (7) shows that the same vehicle enters and leaves a vertex. The
fuel capacity L. Since the route includes halts in facility centers, the number of vehicles that leaves and enters the depot should not
objective seeks to find the minimum cost route for the entire visit. exceed the maximum number of available vehicles is given in eqns.
Each vehicle has a maximum time limit T within which it should (8) and (9). The time taken to reach any vertex j is specified in eqn.
halt at the halting stations and reach the depot. Also, halting sta- (10) which is used to keep track of vehicles arrival time. Eqn. (11)
tions are visited only once for servicing and refuelling stations can keeps track of fuel. Eqn. (12) specifies that the fuel is replenished
be visited any number of times by a vehicle. to its full capacity in either the depot or at the refuelling stations.
The edge set E is associated with distance or cost of travel dij Eqn. (13) ensures that there is enough fuel available to reach either
from i to j. Let tij be the time taken to reach the jth vertex from i the depot or the refuelling station. Eqn. (14) is about the decision
where i; j2V 0 . Let timei be the time taken to reach vertex i. The variable xijk .
service time at i is qi where i2H∪F 0 and ri is the remaining fuel level
at node i. a represents constant fuel consumption rate. The objec- 3.4. Phase 2: To Re-optimize routes to minimize emission
tive is to minimize the overall route cost (Eqn. (4)). The mathe-
matical formulation of the problem is given as follows, Phase two concentrates in re-optimizing the routes with an aim
X to minimize emission. First, the problem is solved with an objective
min dij xijk (4) to minimize distance. Then, to minimize emission, the routes are
i;j2V 0 ;k2M;isj
reconstructed in phase two based on time and congestion as
X vehicle tend to travel in different speed at different time periods.
xijk ¼ 1; cj2V0 ; k2M (5) The speed of vehicle is dependent on the time period. As congestion
i2H;isj increases, speed decreases, resulting in more emission and also
congestion are dependent on time period. Hence, in phase two, the
X
xijk  1; ci 2 F 0 ; k2M (6) objective is defined as below,
j2H∪D;isj X
min d  dij xijk (15)
X X j2V 0 ;isj
0
xihk  xhjk ¼ 0; c h2V ; k2M (7)
i2V 0 ;hsi j2V 0 ;hsj where d is the emission rate, dij is the distance between the stations
i and j. As speed is dependent on time and congestion, a new
X
xDjk  M (8) constraint is included as given in eqn. (16) along with the con-
j2V 0 \fDg straints defined from eqns. (5)e(14).

X X
P
dij
xjDk  M (9) timeijp ¼ (16)
j2V 0 \fDg p¼1
mijp

! ! Here timeijp defines the time of travel between halting stations i and
X X
timei þ tij þ qi xijk  T 1  xijk  timej ; k 2 M; j, dij is the distance between i and j and mijp is the average speed
k k between i and j at time period p. This constraint is used to route the
i 2 V 0 ; j 2 V 0 \D; i s j vehicles based on congestion which is dependent on peak and non
peak hours. The routes are re optimized to get better solution with
(10)
less emission. The halting stations are divided into two zones as
! congested and uncongested areas. Within the defined areas, the
X
0  rj  ri  a dij xijk speed of the vehicle differs with time periods and remains the same
k
between any two stations i and j. The average speed of the vehicle is
! pre calculated within each time frame along with congestion.
X
þ L 1 xijk ck2M; j2H; i2V 0 ; isj (11) When congestion increases, higher fuel emissions are expected.
k Hence the routes are designed to avoid the congested areas during
the peak hours which lead to substantial reduction in emission.
rj ¼ L cj2D∪F 0 (12) Between any two stations i and j, the time of travel and the asso-
ciated speed between any two stations is determined based on the
 X departure time at i. Algorithm 2 elaborates the steps used to re
rj  L  a:dij xijk ck2M; i2H; j2D∪F 0 ; isj (13) optimize the routes.
k
Algorithm 2. Re-optimize Routes
 0
1; if vehicle k travels from i to j; i; j2V
xijk ¼
0; otherwise
(14)
 G. Poonthalir et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 258 (2020) 120661
Fig. 2. Overall representation of the phases to solve MAVRP.
The improvement procedure uses local exchange operator,
where stations between the two routes are exchanged till no
further improvement is possible. The overall working of the phases
is demonstrated in Fig. 2.
3.5. Hybrid Particle Swarm optimization
MAVRP is solved using Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization
(HPSO). PSO is a stochastic search Algorithm inspired by fish
schooling or birds flocking. PSO starts with a set of particles (so-
lutions) initialized in a multi dimensional space. It searches for an
optimum solution over many generations. Each particle keeps track
of its position in the multi dimensional space as personal best
(pbest) which is the best position achieved by it so far. Each parti-
cle’s best position among the population in all the generation is
stored as global best (gbest). At each step, the velocity of the particle
is updated using the particle’s local and global best positions. To
enable PSO escape from local minimum, various hybridized ver-
sions of PSO are used in the literature.
Hybrid algorithms proves to generate better results for combi-
natorial optimization problems as observed from the works of Fard
and Keshteli (2018a, 2018b, Fathollahi-Fard et al., 2018 where they
attempted several hybridized versions of the algorithms to
demonstrate their superiority. A combination of genetic operator
crossover and PSO is used by Xu et al. (2015) where crossover is
used for exploration. PSO is combined with simulated annealing
(Alinezhad et al., 2018) for VRPTW with simultaneous delivery and
pick up where annealing is used to improve the searching ability of
PSO. PSO with greedy strategy is used by Marinakis et al. (2010) to
improve the quality of solution. HPSO to solve CVRP is used by
Geetha et al. (2010).
This paper employs Hybrid PSO (HPSO) which incorporates the
operators of genetic Algorithm. In each iteration, a two point cross
over is used for better exploitation. Mutation is done using circular
7
shift or inversion operator for better exploration. The steps used in
Phase one to obtain the routes using HPSO are explained below.
Each particle in HPSO represents the positions of the halting
stations and is initialized with N halting stations. Two represen-
tations are used to construct the solution, one is particle and the
other is the route. To construct a route, depots are inserted. Refu-
elling halts are included when necessary. Each vehicle has a
maximum time limit within which it should visit all halting stations
for advertising and returns to the depot. When a vehicle runs out of
fuel and, has not exceeded the maximum time, it is guided to the
nearby refuelling station for refilling the fuel. When the vehicle is
not able to halt at the specified halting station for shortage of time,
it is guided to the nearby depot. Hence based on the positions
generated for the halting stations (particle), the depot and refuel-
ling stations are included to form the route.
3.5.1. Particle initialization
The swarm (Sm ) is initialized with a set of particles
fH1 ; H2 ; :::; HN g which represents the halting stations and a random
particle l is represented as ðxl1 ;xl2 ;:::;xlN Þ. Around 75% of particles
are initialized using nearest neighbour heuristic with the initial
seed taken at random and the remaining 25% of particles are
generated at random.
3.5.2. Route generation
To generate route from the particles, depot and refuelling halts
are included. Each route starts and ends with the depot. The total
time taken by each vehicle is calculated as given in eqn. (17).
X  
tot time ¼ tv0 i þ qi þ tij xijk þ tjV0 (17)
i;j2V 0 \fV0 Þ;isj
If time T  tot time is not sufficient for vehicles to reach the
halting station, the vehicles returns to the depot. Similarly, the total
fuel consumed is tracked using eqn. (18)
fuel remaining ¼ total fuel  dij  a (18)
when fuel remaining < L and is not sufficient to serve another
halting station, then the vehicle is refuelled in a nearby refuelling
station. At the end of this procedure, a feasible route is generated
which includes the halting station, depot and if necessary the
refuelling station.
3.5.3. Fitness calculation
The total cost for a route is the fitness and is also the objective
function. The route cost obtained for the ith particle is calculated
using the following equations.
X
Route CostðiÞ ¼ dV0 ;i þ di;j þ dj;V0 ci2V\fV0 g (19)
i;j2V\fV0 g
X
Total CostðiÞ ¼ Route CostðiÞ (20)
k2M
8 G. Poonthalir et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 258 (2020) 120661

3.5.4. Personal and global best update

After the generation of feasible routes, the best route for a
particle (pbest ) the overall best route obtained over all the genera-
tions (gbest ) are stored. pbest is the best position achieved by the
particle and gbest is the best position achieved by the entire swarm
among all the particles. It is updated as specified in following
equations, where t represents the current iteration number and I is
the total number of iterations.

Total costðiÞ t¼1
pbest ¼ (21)
minðTotal costðiÞ; pbest Þ t>1

gbest ¼ minðpbest Þ ct ¼ 1; 2; :::I (22)

Fig. 4. Cross over operation.

3.5.5. Particle encoding and decoding

After determining pbest and gbest , the routes are converted to
particles to enable velocity update. To achieve this, the depot and
refuelling stations are removed from the route, leaving behind the
halting stations. Each halting station is mapped to a particle in the
multi dimensional space using the following equation,

ðzmax  zmin Þ  
yij ¼ zmin þ xij  1 þ rand (23) Fig. 5. Circular shift operator.
N

where xij represents the ith particle with jth dimension. zmin and
zmax are the boundary values of particle positions and rand repre-
sents the random number in the interval ½0; 1. The particles are
decoded back using Rank of Value (ROV) to halting station posi-
tions. The procedure is depicted in Fig. 3.

3.5.6. Velocity update

Fig. 6. Inversion operator.
Particles are updated by a velocity which guides it to reach the
global optimum through iterations. The velocity of the ith particle is
updated using eqn. (24) small values of inertia encourages local exploitation and large value
increases global exploration. Hence inertia is assigned with a large
vid ðt þ 1Þ ¼ uðtÞvid ðtÞ þ c1  r1  ðpbest  xid Þ þ c2  r2
value initially and is decreased during the optimization process to
ðgbest  xid Þ (24)
encompass a refined search in promising areas as given in Equation
xid ðt þ 1Þ ¼ xid ðtÞ þ vid ðt þ 1Þ
(25).
where vid ðt þ1Þ represents the velocity of the particle at iteration
ðr  IÞ
ðt þ1Þ and vid ðtÞ is the velocity of the particle at iteration ðtÞ.c1 and uðtÞ ¼ umax   ðumin  umax Þ (25)
c2 are cognitive and social parameters respectively and uðtÞ is the ð1  IÞ
varying inertia. To improve the performance of PSO, an inertia co-
where umin and umax represents the initial and final inertial coef-
efficient is used which can be a constant or a variant. With varying
ficient respectively.
inertia, exploitation will be good than with constant inertia. An
initial exploration guides the particle to a promising search space
and local exploitation guides for faster convergence. Generally,
3.5.7. Crossover operation
A two point crossover operator is applied on the solution as
shown in Fig. 4. After the cross over the duplicates are eliminated
using ranking.

3.5.8. Circular shift operator

To enable HPSO to escape from local minima, circular shift is
used. A random number (rand) is selected at random within the
interval ½ N; N where N is the number of halting stations. When
rand is negative, a right circular shift till rand is carried out. When
rand is positive a left circular shift till rand is carried out. It is
explained in Algorithm 4 and is demonstrated in Fig. 5.
Algorithm 4. Circular Shift

Fig. 3. Particle encoding and decoding.

 G. Poonthalir et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 258 (2020) 120661 9

3.5.9. Inversion operator intra or inter route based on time and emission as mentioned in
An inversion on a particle is carried out based on the random Algorithm 6. If feasible, insertion is carried out which results in
number. If the selected random number is less than pm then minimum emission route. The graphical illustration of the phases is
inversion is carried out on the selected particle. It is explained in depicted in Fig. 7.
Algorithm 5 and is shown in Fig. 6. In each iteration, phase 1 produces best routes with minimum
distance using HPSO and in phase 2, using local exchange operator,
Algorithm 5. Inversion operator
the halting stations are adjusted between congested and uncon-

3.5.10. Local exchange operator gested stations based on time till no further improvement is real-
It is used to exchange the positions of halting stations either ized. Hence for a single iteration of the outer loop (HPSO), inner

Fig. 7. Graphical illustration of the solution with two phases.

10 G. Poonthalir et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 258 (2020) 120661
loop (local exchange operator) executes till no further improve-
ment is realized on the routes. Then the best routes obtained are
stored which will be replaced by further iterations.
3.5.11. Algorithm HPSO for MAVRP
The overall step of the Algorithm that describes the procedure of
HPSO on MAVRP is described in algorithm 6.
Algorithm 6.
3.6. Theoretical analysis
This section is used to analyze the correctness of the proposed
Algorithm HPSO.
Lemma 1. All the routes produced by HPSO are feasible.
Proof: To prove that the routes produced by HPSO is feasible is
to prove that the constraints from eqns. (6)e(14) are satisfied
which are described in the mathematical model. Let us consider the
 G. Poonthalir et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 258 (2020) 120661
ith particle which represents the halting stations as fxi1 ; xi2 ; :::; xiN g.
The particles are converted to routes by including depot and refu-
elling stations where necessary. Each route includes the refuelling
station when it is not possible for a vehicle to stop at a halting
station where the fuel remaining is not sufficient to reach the next
halting station. Hence the vehicles halt at nearby refuelling station
which satisfies the constraints given in eqns. (11)e(13). All vehicles
are scheduled to reach the depot within the maximum time. When
a vehicle is not able to halt at the halting station due to time con-
straints where, T  tot time is not sufficient to reach the halting
station, it is directed to the nearby depot satisfying the conditions
provided in eqn. (10). The other constraints given in eqns. (5)e(8)
are checked while constructing the routes and hence the con-
straints from eqns. (5)e(13) are satisfied which generates feasible
routes.
Lemma 2. The routes obtained using HPSO and local exchange
operator produces near optimal emission route.
Proof: The best routes obtained using HPSO in phase one is used
to obtain the minimum emission route. The routes obtained using
phase one are all feasible as it satisfies all the constraints given from
Eqn. (6) to (14). Among the obtained routes, local exchange oper-
ator is applied on best routes and they are converted to minimum
emission route based on Algorithm 2. As already described, halting
stations are classified as lc and lu which represents the stations
under congested and uncongested zones respectively. The time and
speed of congestion is also known. Suppose the best route obtained
is q where q2A. Let pp and pn represents the time zone for peak
hour and non peak hour respectively. Using local exchange oper-
ator, the halting station hs 2pp ∩lc is tried to exchange with hU 2
lc ∪pn k pp ∩lu k lu ∩pn where hs ; hU 2q which represents the
halting stations in a single route. This exchange is possible subject
to the feasibility of the time and fuel constraints described in eqns.
(18) and (19) respectively. The archive A has d best routes and ex-
change operator is applied to all the routes in A. Among the routes,
the best route that produces a solution with minimum cost and
emission is selected. Since the routes produced by HPSO are
optimal the local exchange operator produces a minimum emission
route.
4. Results and discussion
This section describes the procedure used to calculate the routes
obtained for MAVRP instance in phases 1 and 2.
4.1. Results obtained in phase 1 for G-VRP using HPSO
To study the behaviour of the proposed HPSO Algorithm, Green
Vehicle Routing Problem (G-VRP) proposed by Erdogan and Miller
Hooks (2012) data set is used. There are four data sets, each with
ten different data instances with 20 customers each. Customers are
classified based on the distribution as uniform customers, clustered
customers and a combination of both clustered and uniform cus-
tomers. First two data sets have three refuelling stations, the third
data set has six refuelling stations and the fourth data set has two to
ten refuelling stations. Fourth data set is used to study the impact of
the refuelling stations. Service times are assumed to be 30 min and
15 min at customer location and refuelling stations respectively.
The total time taken by each vehicle is 11 h and the vehicle starts
with 60 gallons of fuel. It is assumed that the vehicle travel at an
average speed of 40 miles/hour with a fuel consumption rate of
0.2 gallons/mile. The objective is to find a low cost tour that visits all
customers within the time limit. If fuel level is minimum, it is
refuelled in the nearby refuelling station and the vehicle should not
be left stranded.
11
Fig. 8. Comparison of distance/route cost using various algorithms.
The Algorithm is implemented on Intel core I3e5005U proces-
sor with 2.00 GHz and 4 GB RAM using MATLAB R2014b in Win-
dows 10.
Erdogan and Miller Hooks (2012) solved the problem using
Modified Clarke and Wright Savings Algorithm (MCWS) and Den-
sity Based Clustering Algorithm (DBCA). To show the effectiveness
of the proposed HPSO, the routes obtained using MCWS and DBCA
are compared against the routes obtained using PSO and HPSO for
G-VRP dataset. Fig. 8 displays the overall distance obtained using
HPSO on G-VRP data set.
Table 3 displays the cumulative route cost and total carbon
emission for all the four data sets. The fuel conversion factor is
taken as 2.63/litre of diesel. G-VRP is solved using phase 1 alone and
the resulting routes obtained are calculated for emission using the
distance based approach. From the results it is evident that, HPSO is
able to get better routes than MCWS, DBCA and PSO. It also gen-
erates less emission routes and is depicted in Fig. 9.
For the routes obtained using HPSO, the total emission using
MEET is also calculated and is displayed in Table 4. To derive the
emission estimation using MEET, eqn. (2) is used where the average
speed of the vehicle is taken as 40 km/h and the weight of the
vehicle is taken in the range of 3.5e7.5 tonnes. Fig. 10 shows the
comparison of the emission obtained using MEET for various al-
gorithms. The results project a decrease in the route cost and
emission using MEET for HPSO.
The difference between estimating emission using distance
based approach and MEET is, distance based approach derives
emission under the assumption that vehicle travel with uniform
speed and emission is influenced by the distance alone. But, in
MEET, the weight of vehicle and speed play an important role in
emission estimation. Hence distance based approach cannot be
applied to determine emission when speed of the vehicle is
considered.
4.2. Idling emission estimation using regression
When a vehicle’s emission is estimated, idle emission should
also be accounted to assess the total emission from vehicles. While
many emission estimation models are available in literature for
vehicle cruise estimation, idle emission estimation is often ignored.
But, idling emission is imperative and should be addressed.
Idling emission occurs with vehicle halts and is estimated using
eqn. (4). But, idle fuel consumption is hard to comprehend. Because
12 G. Poonthalir et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 258 (2020) 120661

Table 3
Emission Estimation of CO2 for the data sets using Distance Based Approach.

Data MCWS DBCA PSO HPSO

Set
Total Total No. Emission Total Total No. Emission Total Total No. Emission Total Total No. Total distance Emission Distance Kg
distance of routes (Kg co2) distance of routes (Kg co2) distance of routes (Kg co2) No. of routes travelled (Kg co2) travelled/ co2/
travelled travelled travelled halts (Kms) route route

1 27132.04 59 33595 26977.93 59 33404.18 26872.38 59 32321.06 14 59 26103.18 28474.49 442.42 482.62
2 31601.61 64 39129.24 31523.38 64 39032.38 30475.05 60 37734.33 29 59 29127.57 31773.63 493.68 538.53
3 30580.03 65 37864.32 30506.28 65 37773 29639.90 66 36700.24 27 66 28732.62 31342.8 435.34 474.89
4 25495.96 57 31569.2 25247.1 57 31261.06 24278.67 58 30061.91 13 58 22750.31 24817.03 392.24 427.87

Fig. 9. Carbon emission obtained for various algorithms using distance based Fig. 10. Emission estimation of various algorithms using MEET.
approach.

of the complexity in determining fuel consumption during idling, a
regression equation is constructed. The fuel consumption of vehi-
cles and the corresponding idle time in seconds for vehicles in the
category between 3.5 tonnes and 7.5 tonnes are collected. A sample
of 200 data are collected and a regression equation is constructed
which is given as y ¼ 0:2762x þ 10:417. The relationship between
fuel consumption and idle time is shown pictorially in Fig. 11 for the
samples. Using this equation, the fuel consumption of vehicle in
milli litres is determined for idle time in seconds. The obtained
Pearson coefficient is 0.948 with p-value 0.000.
Since the emission obtained for G-VRP does not include idle
emission, using the equation obtained above, an approximate idle
emission is determined. In G-VRP, vehicles halt at customer location
for serving the customers and at refuelling station for refuelling. It
is assumed that, the vehicle idles for about 20 s at customer location
and 10 s at refuelling stations respectively. Using this, the idle fuel
consumption and the corresponding idling emission is obtained
and is projected in Table 5. The values presented in Table 5 are
illustrative and the idle time is taken only for a few seconds. When
the idle time increases, fuel consumption and emission increases
which represents a positive correlation between idle time and
emission.
The emission rate depicted in Table 5 is for a single day route and
it can be substantial when it is assessed for a year. Also, the results
are considered for 20 and 10 s of idling which increases with idling
time. The experiments conducted using G-VRP data set reveals the
efficiency of the proposed HPSO Algorithm for phase 1 where the
routes are determined with constant speed.
4.3. Comparison of HPSO with optimal solution
The efficiency of the proposed HPSO is tested on 10 small data
instances that are created using the geographical location shown in
Fig. 16. For all the instances the depot and the refuelling stations are
fixed (marked orange). These instances are created at random with
the number of customers ranging from 4 to 12. The optimal solution
for these instances is obtained using Gurobi 7.0.2 implemented
with python 2.7. The optimal solutions obtained for all the 10 data
instances are presented in Table 6. The results obtained using
Gurobi are compared with HPSO and it is proved that HPSO is able
to obtain the solution with less deviation from the optimal solution.
The Relative Percentage Deviation (RPD) between the optimal so-
lution and HPSO is computed using,

Table 4
Emission Estimation of CO2 using MEET.

Data Total distance travelled MCWS Kgs of Total distance travelled DBCA Kgs of Total distance travelled PSO Kgs of Total distance travelled HPSO Kgs of
Set (kms) co2 (kms) co2 (Kms) co2 (Kms) co2

1 27132.04 8903.38 26977.93 8852.80 26872.38 8818.171 26103.18 8565.76

2 31601.61 10370.07 31523.38 10344.4 30475.05 10000.39 29127.57 9558.21
3 30580.03 10034.84 30506.28 10010.64 29639.90 9726.333 28732.62 9428.60
4 25495.96 8366.49 25247.1 8284.83 24278.67 7967.046 22750.31 7465.51
 G. Poonthalir et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 258 (2020) 120661 13

Fig. 11. Sample data and the line of fit.

Table 5 with the best chromosome or with a randomly generated chro-

Idling emission estimation. mosome based on a random variable. Then swap and inversion
Data Set 1 2 3 4 mutations are used. The parameters used for GA are also tuned.
Total Idling emission (grams of co2) 0.0552 0.0244 0.0274 0.0546
4.4.2. Simulated annealing (SA)
Simulated Annealing is introduced by Kirkpatrick et al. (1983).
Many variants of VRP are solved using SA (Kuo (2010), Osman
obtainedcost  optimalcost (1993); Vincent et al. (2017)). It starts with a single solution and
RPD ¼  100 (26)
optimalcost iteratively finds a best solution by making a move to a neighbour-
The results predicted in Table 6 projects the efficiency of HPSO in hood position. The solution is accepted based on acceptance
comparison with the optimal solution obtained. The relative per- probability.
centage deviation of 0.13% shows the superior performance of
HPSO. 4.4.3. Chemical Reaction Optimization(CRO)
CRO is a recent meta heuristic proposed by Lam and Li (2009).
4.4. Comparing the performance of HPSO with other algorithms VRP is solved using CRO (Dam et al. (2017); Li et al. (2018)). It is a
varied population based meta heuristic. It starts with a set of
4.4.1. Genetic Algorithm (GA) molecules (solution) and undergoes four chemical reactions. There
Mohammed et al. (2017), Da Costa et al. (2018) used Genetic are two kinds of reactions uni molecular: on wall ineffective colli-
Algorithm (Holland 1975) to solve VRP. Each chromosome is a so- sion, decomposition and multi molecular: inter molecular ineffec-
lution. The population has chromosomes where 30% is generated tive collision and synthesis. Based on the parameter molecol
using nearest neighbour heuristic and the remaining using random (molecular collision), uni or multi molecular collision can occur.
permutation. A procedure is run to convert the chromosomes to Each molecule has Kinetic Energy (KE) (exploration) and Potential
routes based on the feasibility of time and fuel constraints as Energy (PE) (exploitation). An initial KE (initKE) is assigned to each
explained above. Roulette wheel selection is carried out to select molecule which is updated in the course of reactions.
the individuals for next generation. A two point crossover is done KE is used to accept the worst solutions and the molecules

Table 6
Optimal and obtained route cost for small data set.

Data Set No. Of Customers Optimal Route Cost HPSO Relative Percentage Deviation

Small1_4 4 368.10 368.29 0.05

Small2_4 4 423.22 423.24 0.00
Small3_5 5 482.28 482.28 0.00
Small4_5 5 415.54 417.20 0.40
Small5_6 6 410.18 410.98 0.20
Small6_7 7 333.76 335.93 0.65
Small7_8 8 452.92 453.00 0.02
Small8_8 8 448.66 448.67 0.00
Small9_10 10 536.47 536.49 0.00
Small10_12 12 519.52 519.63 0.02
14 G. Poonthalir et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 258 (2020) 120661

Table 7
Parameter values of different algorithms.

Algorithm Parameter Levels

Level 1 Level 2 Level 3 Level 4

Genetic Algorithm Maximum iteration 1000 1500 2000 2500

Population size 20 25 30 35
Crossover rate 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8
Mutation rate 0.02 0.03 0.04 0.05
Particle Swarm Optimization Maximum iteration 1000 2000 2500 e
Initial Inertia Weight 0.9 0.8 0.7 e
Final Inertia Weight 0.2 0.4 0.2 e
Acceleration coefficient 1.2 1.5 2.0 e
Simulated Annealing Maximum iteration 2000 2500 3000 e
Initial temperature 1000 1200 1500 e
Temperature reduction rate 0.89 0.90 0.95 e
Iteration rate 10 15 20 e
Chemical Reaction Optimization Maximum iteration 1000 2000 2500 e
Kinetic Energy lossrate (KElossrate) 0.8 0.7 0.6 e
Molecol 0.2 0.3 0.4 e
Initial Kinetic Energy 800 1000 1200 e
Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization Maximum iteration 1000 2000 2500 e
Initial Inertia Weight 0.9 0.8 0.7 e
Final Inertia Weight 0.2 0.4 0.3 e
Acceleration coefficient 1.2 1.5 2.0 e
Crossover rate 0.6 0.7 0.8 e
Mutation rate 0.03 0.04 0.05 e

Fig. 12. Average SN ratio of GA.

undergo reactions till a specified maximum number of iterations.
During the reactions, some amount of KE is lost (KElossrate) to
enable exploration in the later stages.
On wall ineffective collision: A molecule hits the wall and
bounces away and the structure of the molecule changes using
swap mutation.
Decomposition: A single molecule changes into two new mol-
ecules. To enable this, circular shift is used.
Inter molecular ineffective collision: Two random molecules
undergo collision and produce two different molecules which use a
two point crossover.
Synthesis: Two molecules collide and produce a single mole-
cule. A random number is generated, if the number is greater than a
specified value, then first molecule position is selected otherwise,
second molecule position is selected.
4.5. Parameter tuning
To assess the efficiency and to test the performance of HPSO,
meta heuristics like Genetic Algorithm (GA), Particle Swarm Opti-
mization (PSO), Simulated Annealing (SA) and Chemical Reaction
Optimization (CRO) are used for comparison.
 G. Poonthalir et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 258 (2020) 120661 15

Fig. 13. Average SN ratio of PSO.

Fig. 14. Average SN ratio of CRO parameters.

The performance of any meta heuristic is dependent on the
parameters, hence it is important to tune the parameters for better
performance (Hajiaghaei-Keshteli and Fathollahi Fard, 2018). Based
on the works of Fathollahi-Fard et al., 2018 and 2018e) parameter
tuning of the meta heuristics are carried out using Taguchi method.
As the test problem is different, the Relative Percentage Deviation
as specified in Fathollahi Fard 2018a is used. Table 7 specifies the
parameter setting of the various algorithms along with their values.
The obtained SN ratios are plotted from Figs. 12e16. To assess
the efficiency of HPSO, the performance is compared with other
algorithms like Genetic Algorithm (GA), Particle Swarm Optimiza-
tion (PSO), Simulated Annealing (SA) and Chemical Reaction Opti-
mization (CRO). As the success of meta heuristics lie in proper
tuning of parameters, the parameters are tuned for performance.
Table 8 projects the parameters used by the various algorithms.
16 G. Poonthalir et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 258 (2020) 120661

Fig. 15. Average SN ratio of HPSO parameters.

Fig. 16. Average SN ratio for SA parameters.

Table 8
Best parameter values obtained using the experiments.

Algorithm Parameter values obtained using Taguchi

PSO Maxiterations: 2500, initial inertia:0.9, final inertia:0.4, acceleration:1.5

GA Maxiterations:2500, popsize:25, crossover: 0.7, mutation:0.02
PSO Maxiterations:2500, initial inertia: 0.9, final inertia:0.4, acceleration:1.5
SA Max iterations:3000, initial temp:1500, temp reduction:0.89, iterations rate:10
HPSO max iterations:2000, initial inertia:0.9, Final inertia:0.4, acceleration coeff:2.0,
Crossover rate:0.7, mutation rate;0.05.
CRO Maxiterations:2000, KElossrate:0.8, molecol:0.4,initKE:1000
 G. Poonthalir et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 258 (2020) 120661 17

Fig. 17. Map of the geographical area.

Table 9
Time line and speed with Congestion.

Time Speed at Congested Area Speed at Uncongested Area

8.00 a.m.e11.00 a.m. (pp ) 20 km/h 40 km/h
11.00 a.m. to 3.00 p.m. (pn ) 40 km/h 40 km/h
3.00 p.m.e7.00 p.m. (pp ) 20 km/h 40 km/h

Fig. 18. Average speed of vehicle in congested and uncongested areas during various time periods.

4.6. Results obtained using phase 1 and phase 2 on MAVRP: A case
study
HPSO is used to design a green route for MAVRP. For the case
study, each vehicle starts from a central depot at 8.00 a.m. and will
return back to the depot at 7.00 pm If a vehicle runs out of fuel, it is
refuelled in the nearby fuelling station. At each station, the vehicle
halts for about 15 min to gather the attention of people and
30 min at the refuelling station. The maximum time limit for each
vehicle is 11 h. Fig. 17 shows the geographical location of 16 halting
stations (marked yellow) along with 3 refuelling stations (marked
orange) from a region of India. From the map, the latitude and
longitude information are extracted and are converted to Euclidean
distance co-ordinates.
The area under study is divided into two zones based on traffic
congestion as congested and uncongested areas respectively. The
18 G. Poonthalir et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 258 (2020) 120661

Table 10
Route cost for MAVRP using various algorithms.

Algorithm Phase 1 Phase 2

Number of routes Halts in Refuelling station Initial Route cost Number of routes Halts in Refuelling Station Optimized Route cost

PSO 6 3 1472.89 6 2 1442.93

GA 6 3 1487.32 6 2 1493.22
CRO 6 2 1447.32 5 1 1323.42
SA 6 3 1489.93 6 2 1493.84
HPSO 6 2 1445.71 5 1 1319.75

Table 11 to travel at an optimum speed. Hence speed plays a major role in

Worst, best and average cost of various algorithms. determining the amount of emission.
Algorithm GA PSO CRO SA HPSO To understand the need for solving the problem with a better
Algorithm, it is solved using traditional greedy approach. When the
Best cost 1493.22 1442.93 1323.42 1457.84 1319.75
Worst cost 2098.37 1967.15 1988.24 2564.38 1992.63 problem is solved without optimization, the route cost is 1871.19
Average cost 1783.80 1709.04 1665.83 1977.11 1659.19 with 7 vehicles and 3 refuelling halts. The corresponding emission
Standard Deviation (SD) 100.858 87.37 110.803 184.423 112.147 is 603.2 (kgs. of Co2) with idling emission 1.37 (gms. of Co2) and the
average speed of the vehicle is 39.2 km/h which is very costly when
compared to the results obtained in Tables (10)e(12).
speed of the vehicle varies with various time periods. Within each The problem is solved using GA, PSO, CRO, SA and HPSO and the
time period and zone, the speed of the vehicle differs and remains results obtained are tabulated in Table 10, where the routes ob-
the same between any two stations i and j. Out of 16 stations, 6 are tained using HPSO is better than all the other algorithms.
classified under congested area and the remaining are classified For the case study, the best, worst and average route cost ob-
under uncongested area. The average speed of the vehicle is pre tained by various algorithms is projected in Table 11. HPSO is able to
calculated within each time frame and is displayed in Table 9 and is generate good results and CRO also able to provide a competitive
shown pictorially in Fig. 18. When the traffic is at its peak, travelling performance with HPSO. The box plot of the results is projected in
in congested area results in higher fuel emissions than in the Fig. 19.
uncongested areas. Hence, avoiding the congested areas during the Using PSO, vehicles halts twice at the refuelling station resulting
peak hour results in substantial reduction in fuel emission as in an increased route cost and number of vehicles. But, using HPSO,
congestion depends on time. better route with less number of vehicles is obtained and the
The speed of the vehicle that covers the distance between the vehicle halts once in the refuelling station.
two stations is determined using the departure time along with the Hence HPSO is able to find an optimized route in the search
congestion details i.e. at each station, the time of travel and the space. After re-optimization, an improvement of 8.71% is realized
associated speed between any two stations i and j is determined on the route cost using HPSO. The route obtained by HPSO for the
based on the departure time at i. above distribution is shown in Fig. 20.
Using Phase 1, the routes are obtained with optimal cost, but To estimate emission, MEET is used as MAVRP has a time varying
emission can be high when the route follows the congested area in speed constraint and emission is influenced by the speed. Hence, it
the peak hours. To have a minimum emission route, vehicle should is not possible to estimate emission using distance based approach.
not be made to travel in the congested area during the peak hours To estimate emission, the speed of the vehicles along the entire
(8.00 a.m.e11.00 a.m. and 3.00 p.m.e7.00 p.m.). Hence optimization route is determined. As speed is dependent on congestion and time,
includes route adjustment during the peak hour travel time. the overall speed of the vehicle is determined to calculate emission.
Emission level increases as speed decreases and vehicle is allowed Vehicle tend to have more emission with reduced speed hence the

Fig. 19. Box plot of worst, best and average route cost of various algorithms.
 G. Poonthalir et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 258 (2020) 120661 19

Fig. 20. Optimal Route obtained by HPSO. Fig. 21. Sensitivity analysis of average speed on route cost and emission.

Table 12 Table 14
Co2 emission estimation for MAVRP. Sensitivity analysis of number if refuelling halts on route cost and emission.
Algorithm Average Speed Emission Idling Emission S.No Number of refuelling halts Route Cost Emission
(km/hr) (Kg of co2) (gms of co2)
1 1 1319.75 479.75
GA 30.24 593.34 1.10 2 2 1347.89 489.46
SA 30.09 598.25 1.23 3 3 1368.24 493.96
CRO 35.71 483.31 0.78
PSO 30 591.87 0.95
HPSO 37.14 479.75 0.36
4.7.1. Sensitivity analysis on average speed
The effects of speed and the total number of refuelling halts on
Table 13 the total route cost and total emission (Table 13) is analyzed in this
Sensitivity analyses on the average speed over the total route cost and emission. section.
S.No Average speed Route Cost Emission Fig. 21 shows the relationship between route cost and emission
for the given average speed. Low average speed can increase
1 38.11 1335.21 477.75
2 37.14 1319.75 479.75
emission and hence there is a close correlation between average
3 36.18 1347.89 489.46 speed and emission. To realize less emission, average speed should
4 35.29 1356.61 493.18 be carefully increased and vehicle should not be allowed to travel
with high average speed as it also increases emission. Similarly
route cost increases with less speed which results in more emission
overall speed should be reasonable to minimize emission. If the and hence an additional requirement of fuel with more refuelling
vehicles are allowed to travel in congested area with 20 km/h halts.
speed, then the emission along the route may increase. So, the
routes are optimized such that the uncongested area are visited in 4.7.2. Sensitivity analysis on number of refuelling halts
the initial and the late hours of the tour, so that only less time is Refuelling cost has a direct influence on the route cost. The in-
spent in congested area where the vehicle travels with 20 km/h. fluence of the number of refuelling halts is considered over route
The overall speed used in MAVRP using PSO and HPSO is projected cost and emission. The parameter values are provided in Table 14.
in Table 12. As studied from Fig. 22, when the number of refuelling halts
As depicted, the speed of the vehicle using HPSO is 37.14 km/h as increases, the route cost increases. Hence a careful planning of the
against 30 km/h in PSO. When the vehicle travels with this average route is required that produces minimum emission route accom-
speed, there is a 23.37% decrease in the emission with careful route panied by less number of halts at the refuelling station.
selection. It is observed that using HPSO, better routes are con-
structed and the emission level is also minimized. It should also be
5. Conclusion and future works
noted that the idling emission is more in PSO than in HPSO as the
number of halts is more in PSO. Using the proposed Algorithm, it is
In this paper hierarchical optimization solutions of green rout-
possible to construct a green route that gives better routing plan
ing for mobile advertisement vehicles are proposed and discussed.
with optimal speed and with less emission for MAVRP.
Some conclusions are summarized as follows,

4.7. Sensitivity analysis
To estimate the behaviour of the proposed problem effectively
sensitivity analysis is carried out. Using the sensitivity analysis the
dependencies of important parameters of the model can be studied
(Fathollahi-Fard et al., 2018d).
(1) The problem Mobile Advertisement VRP (MAVRP) is
modelled using hierarchical optimization and is solved
sequentially in phases. Hybrid Particle Swarm Optimization
(HPSO) is used to solve the problem and the obtained routes
are re-optimized using local exchange operator to minimize
emission in the routes.
20 G. Poonthalir et al. / Journal of Cleaner Production 258 (2020) 120661
Fig. 22. Sensitivity analysis of refuelling halts on route cost and emission.
(2) This paper also projects the importance of idling emission
and its impact on the overall emission in vehicles and to
devise a method for calculating idling emission using
regression. To estimate emission, two methods are discussed
in the paper namely, distance based approach and MEET.
Since MAVRP is discussed with time dependent speed
constraint, to estimate emission, MEET is used since it has
average velocity as an influential parameter. Using HPSO,
green routes are devised for MAVRP.
(3) A case study on MAVRP shows that a route with less emission
is constructed under a time varying speed parameter. After
re-optimization, an improvement of 8.71% is realized on the
route cost using HPSO.
(4) Sensitivity analysis depicts that route cost increases with an
increase in the average speed and with the number of refu-
elling halts.
(5) Governments and Organizations can be recommended to
issue high penalty for these vehicles if they emit more than
the stipulated threshold levels.
As an immediate extension of the work, several recent meta
heuristics can be studied on the problem and a comparative anal-
ysis of these meta heuristics can be derived. For example,
(1) Real time constraints like traffic details, stochastic waiting
time of vehicles can be included.
(2) Fuel availability at the refuelling stations can be incorporated
as a constraint.
(3) The problem can be extended by including new objectives
like minimizing the number of halts at the refuelling stations,
minimizing travel time etc.,
(4) Future extensions can include the study on finding the
impact of heterogeneous vehicles, hybrid vehicles and its
impact on emission and route cost.
(5) Further investigations in the problem may open up new
avenues of research as these vehicles are not explored in
literature.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing
financial interests or personal relationships that could have
appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
G. Poonthalir: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software,
Writing - original draft. R. Nadarajan: Supervision, Validation,
Writing - review & editing. M. Senthil Kumar: Validation, Formal
analysis.
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