This study presents a novel approach to the vehicle routing problem byfocusing on greenhouse gas emissions and fuel consumption aiming to mitigateadverse environmental effects of transportation. A time-dependent model withtime windows is developed to incorporate speed and schedule in transportation.The model considers speed limits for different times of the day in a realisticdelivery context. Due to the complexity of solving the model, a simulatedannealing algorithm is proposed to find solutions with high quality in a timelymanner. Our method can be used in practice to lower fuel consumption andgreenhouse gas emissions while total route cost is also controlled to someextent. The capability of method is depicted by numerical examples productivelysolved within 3.5% to the exact optimal for small and mid-sized problems.Moreover, comparatively appropriate solutions are obtained for large problemsin averagely one tenth of the exact method restricted computation time.
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