An alternative solution for the repair of electrical breakdowns after natural disasters based on ant colony optimization

Abstract

Abundant literature is available for the route planning based on meta-heuristic algorithms. However, most researches in this field are developed under normal scenarios (e.g. normal weather conditions). The natural disasters, such as hurricanes, on the contrary, impose hard constraints to these combinatorial problems. In this paper, a route-planning problem is solved, specifically, for the repair of electrical breakdowns that occur after natural disasters. The problem is modeled using an assignment-based integer programming formulation proposed for the Multiple Traveling Salesman Problem (mTSP). Moreover, this paper proposes the creative application of an algorithm based on Ant Colony Optimization (ACO), specifically Multi-type Ant Colony System (M-ACS), where each colony represents a set of possible global solutions. Ants cooperate and compete by means of “frequent” pheromone exchanges aimed to find a solution. The algorithm performance has been compared against other ACO variant, showing the efficacy of the proposed algorithm on realistic decision-making.