This volume is a compendium of papers presented during the second TRlennal Symposium on Transportation ANalysis (TRISTAN II) that took place in Capri, Italy on June 23-28, 1994. The Symposium was organized by the Progetto Finalizzato Trasporti and the Istituto di Analisi dei Sistemi ed Informatica of the Italian National Research Council jointly with the Italian Operations Research Society. The purpose of this kind of meetings is to periodically allow an exchange of views and findings by scientists in the field of transportation analysis methods and tools. Therefore, the papers presented dealt with a wide range of topics and cover the different aspects of transportation analysis. The material contained in this book gives particular emphasis to the development of mathematical modelling and algorithms. This development is due to the evolution of digital computers and the continuous increase of the computing power. In fact the need of solving large scale problems (crew scheduling, network traffic control, pollution monitoring and control, . etc ... ) involves in some case, thousands of variables and therefore sophisticated mathematical models and computational algorithms

Vehicle routing problems, among the most studied in combinatorial optimization, arise in many practical contexts (freight distribution and collection, transportation, garbage collection, newspaper delivery, etc.). Operations researchers have made significant developments in the algorithms for their solution, and the second edition of this book reflects these advances. This text of this new edition is either completely new or significantly revised and provides extensive and complete state-of-the-art coverage of vehicle routing by those who have done most of the innovative research in the area. It emphasizes methodology related to specific classes of vehicle routing problems and, since vehicle routing is used as a benchmark for all new solution techniques, contains a complete overview of current solutions to combinatorial optimization problems. It also includes several chapters on important and emerging applications, such as disaster relief and green vehicle routing.

In the field of combinatorial optimization problems, the Vehicle Routing Problem (VRP) is one of the most challenging. Defined more than 40 years ago, the problem involves designing the optimal set of routes for fleets of vehicles for the purpose of serving a given set of customers. Interest in VRP is motivated by its practical relevance as well as its considerable difficulty. The Vehicle Routing Problem covers both exact and heuristic methods developed for the VRP and some of its main variants, emphasizing the practical issues common to VRP. The book is composed of three parts containing contributions from well-known experts. The first part covers basic VRP, known more commonly as capacitated VRP. The second part covers three main variants of VRP: with time windows, backhauls, and pickup and delivery. The third part covers issues arising in real-world VRP applications and includes both case studies and references to software packages.