Bi-objective Track Inspection Scheduling: Formulation and Solution Analysis

One of the most important railroad safety operations that State Departments of Transportation and/or railroad companies need to plan is the inspection of railroad tracks. In this study, the authors formulate and solve a track inspection scheduling problem with practical restrictions and realistic objectives. Specifically, they model a bi-objective mixed-integer optimization problem where the total time to complete the predetermined number of inspections on a given set of railroad tracks is minimized while the total weighted inspection is maximized. They explicitly consider the travel time from one track to another and the time required between two consecutive inspections of the same track. They propose a genetic algorithm to approximate a set of Pareto efficient schedules for the resulting model and compare it with a naïve greedy approach that can be used for inspection scheduling. Their results indicate that the proposed solution method finds improved schedules not only in terms of total time but also better weighted inspections.

• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AR060 Railway Maintenance.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  500 Fifth Street, NW
  Washington, DC  United States  20001
• Authors:
  • Farhangi, Hadi
  • Konur, Dincer
  • Long, Suzanna
  • Qin, Ruwen
  • Harper, Jennifer
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 94th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2015-1-11 to 2015-1-15
• Date: 2015

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; References; Tables;
• Pagination: 18p
• Monograph Title: TRB 94th Annual Meeting Compendium of Papers

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Genetic algorithms; Inspection; Mixed integer programming; Railroad safety; Railroad tracks; Scheduling
• Subject Areas: Maintenance and Preservation; Operations and Traffic Management; Planning and Forecasting; Railroads; I60: Maintenance; I72: Traffic and Transport Planning;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01557533
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: 15-5585
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Mar 23 2015 8:59AM