Multi-objective location-routing model for hazardous material logistics with traffic restriction constraint in inter-city roads

Effective solutions to the hazardous material location and routing problem are of practical significance, for both logistics companies and government departments. However, most existing hazardous material location and routing studies lack certain practicabilities in dealing with real-life problems. In this paper, we present a novel multi-objective optimization method for finding the optimal routes in hazardous material logistics under the constraint of traffic restrictions in inter-city roads. In addition, to move the solution method closer to practical application, we propose to consider multiple paths between every possible origin-destination pair. The resulting multi-objective location-routing model is able to jointly address the important aspects of risk, cost, and customer satisfaction in hazardous material logistics management. A single genetic algorithm and an adaptive weight genetic algorithm are proposed to solve the proposed model respectively, whose chromosomes contain two types of genes, representing warehouses and transportation routes respectively. A real-world case study is provided to illustrate the efficacy of the proposed model and its associated solution method.