Operations Research 2025
Abstract Submission

51. Optimizing Ocean Waste Collection through a Team Orienteering Problem with Moving Targets

Invited abstract in session WE-11: Heuristics, stream Heuristics, Metaheuristics and Matheuristics.

Wednesday, 16:30-18:00
Room: U2-200

Authors (first author is the speaker)

1. Paulina Heine
Business Decisions and Analytics, University of Vienna

Abstract

Plastic waste pollution in the oceans presents growing environmental and logistical challenges.
Floating debris accumulates in large regions such as the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Despite its name, this “patch” is not a continuous area of waste, but rather a vast zone where plastic debris concentrates into multiple dynamic hotspots driven by ocean currents. This research addresses the problem of coordinating waste collection vessels in such a highly dynamic environment, enabling them to move from hotspot to hotspot to collect as much waste as possible. This task is modeled as a Team Orienteering Problem with Moving Targets, where both hotspots and vessels are affected by current direction and strength.

The objective is to maximize waste collection within a fixed time window.
To reduce the complexity of the problem, it is first modeled as a static version, disregarding current-induced dynamics. This simplified version is solved exactly and then evaluated under realistic conditions by deploying it in a dynamic simulation that includes the actual influence of ocean currents.
The static solution is benchmarked against a reactive greedy heuristic, which continuously reallocates patches in real time based on the distance between vessels and patches or the value of a hotspot.

The distribution, location, and movement of debris hotspots are simulated using real ocean current data. The plastic debris itself is artificially introduced to generate controlled yet realistic collection scenarios.

This work contributes to the field by extending the orienteering problem to current-driven maritime environments, integrating movement-aware routing and dynamic hotspot allocation. The approach supports the development of effective strategies for marine waste management.

Keywords

Status: accepted

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