Routeing road sweepers in a rural area

A computer program has been developed to assist the routeing of road-sweeping vehicles in a part of the north-west of England. The aim of the study was to develop a method which would specify the route to be followed by each sweeper which minimized the dead distance travelled, subject to constraints on the capacity of the sweeper and the time available in any day. The method had to be flexible so that the effects of changes, such as new vehicles, alterations to the location of tips for detritus, or different frequencies of sweeping could be examined quickly. The paper describes how the design of the heuristic algorithm was influenced by the geography of the area, the computing facilities and the time available to complete the study.