Robust vehicle routing DSS and road networks on a European scale?

During the last decades we have been involved in the development of an assortment of DSS in the area of Logistics. It comprises systems to support organisations to decide upon logistic network structures on a country, European or even Global level in response to social, economic, market, organisational, technological and environmental changes. Further, it encompasses operational vehicle route planning systems (VRP-DSS) with their incorporated Road Network System (RNS) that are used to support the determination of operational vehicle routing plans within the previously mentioned logistic networks. From our experience we have learned about the complexity and the spectrum of logistic problems and the variety of ways in which these problems are being solved. We have perceived that the functional and performance requirements for VRP-DSS have changed rapidly over the last decade in response to the increased importance of logistic processes, changing practical quantitative and qualitative routing constraints, evolving organisational procedures for planning and alterations in the registration of distribution processes. Many current VRP-DSS and RNS do not satisfy basic functional and performance requirements. In this paper we describe developments regarding the problem domains for VRP and RNS, the variety of requirements for these systems, including quantitative and qualitative routing constraints and National and European Road Networks. Finally, we pay attention to logical architectures for these systems and RNS that satisfy user requirements.