EURO 2025 Leeds
Abstract Submission

1804. Optimizing Food Bank Deliveries in Bogotá Colombia

Invited abstract in session MD-15: Vehicle Routing problems, stream Combinatorial Optimization.

Monday, 14:30-16:00
Room: Esther Simpson 1.08

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Robert Dell
Industrial and Systems Engineering, University at Buffalo
2. Sabrina Casucci
University at Buffalo
3. Gonzalo Enrique Mejia Delgadillo
Industrial Engineering, Universidad de La Sabana
4. Seyed Torabzadeh
University at Buffalo

Abstract

We present a vehicle routing problem (VRP) developed for the Banco de Alimentos de Bogotá, a food bank in Bogotá, Colombia, that plays a vital role in alleviating food insecurity in Colombia by supporting approximately 500,000 individuals through a network of 500 agencies distributing food to individuals. Problem characteristics include a dedicated homogenous fleet of vehicles operating from a single depot, agencies with time windows for deliveries, and agencies with differing monthly delivery requirements. We plan daily routes for the dedicated fleet of vehicles over a month that adhere to time window, monthly frequency requirements, and other fleet limits while striving to both minimize vehicle usage and evenly distribute the workload over the month. To help distribute the workload evenly, we iterate between an integer linear program to assign agencies to days and a daily VRP for the fleet of vehicles.

Keywords

Status: accepted


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