An adaptive and diversified vehicle routing approach to reducing the security risk of cash-in-transit operations

Official URL: http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/net.21735

We consider the route optimization problem of transporting valuables in cash-in-transit (CIT) operations. The problem arises as a rich variant of the capacitated vehicle routing problem (CVRP) with time windows and pickup and deliveries. Due to the high-risk nature of this operation (e.g., robberies) we consider a bi-objective function where we attempt to minimize the total transportation cost and the security risk of transporting valuables along the designed routes. For risk minimization, we propose a composite risk measure that is a weighted sum of two risk components: (i) following the same or very similar routes, and (ii) visiting neighborhoods with low socio-economic status along the routes. We also consider vehicle capacities in terms of monetary value carried as per insurance regulations. We develop an adaptive randomized bi-objective path selection algorithm that uses the composite risk measure in choosing alternative paths between origin-destination pairs over a sequence of days. We solve the rich CVRP approximately for each day with updated costs. We test our solution approach on a data set from a CIT delivery service provider and provide insights on how the routes diversify daily. Our approach generates a spectrum of solutions with cost-risk trade-off to support decision making