1936. A Stakeholder-Driven Approach to Handling Uncertainties in School Bus Routing for Pupils Living with Special Needs
Invited abstract in session MB-59: Routing decisions , stream Transportation.
Monday, 10:30-12:00Room: Liberty 1.14
Authors (first author is the speaker)
| 1. | Ozioma Paul
|
| Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester | |
| 2. | Julia Handl
|
| Manchester Business School, University of Manchester | |
| 3. | Manuel López-Ibáñez
|
| University of Manchester |
Abstract
The School Bus Routing Problem is a well-established combinatorial optimisation problem that aims to determine the most efficient routes for transporting students while ensuring safety, cost-effectiveness, and time efficiency. In bus route generation for pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), assuming static travel times often proves impractical in the face of potential delays and disruptions to pick-up times, which are sometimes not easily prevented or predicted.
In a bid to address this, this study adopts an interdisciplinary approach by combining insights from stakeholder engagements with existing techniques for handling uncertainties in bus route optimisation. Through the engagements with decision-makers in the school bus ecosystem, variability and delays in the pick-up times were identified as a major source of uncertainty. These uncertainties around pick-up times were of particular significance for routes and buses catering to pupils living with SEND, as long wait times can affect the well-being and disposition of the pupils upon arrival at the schools. This study models the uncertainties as stochastic delays and evaluates the effectiveness of explicit and implicit averaging techniques in improving the robustness of the generated routes using real-world datasets.
Our findings demonstrate the role of these averaging techniques in reducing the impact of real-time disruptions, leading to more reliable bus routing solutions.
Keywords
- Vehicle Routing
- Scheduling
- Transportation
Status: accepted
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