Probability model to solve the school bus routing problem with stops selection

This paper describes the use of a new algorithm that solves the school bus routing problem with stops selection. The aim is to reduce the travel time of a set of buses that transport students to a school. The fundamental contribution of the authors is the use of a probability model to describe the feasible solution space distribution and thus to get the best solution. An estimation of distribution algorithm is used to address the combinatorial complexity of the problem statement. Different and better results are obtained with the proposed algorithm against a genetic algorithm. The contribution of this paper is to propose an alternative to solve permutation-based representation problems with logistics application.