The Capacitated Vehicle Routing Problem with Evidential Demands: A Belief-Constrained Programming Approach

This paper studies a vehicle routing problem, where vehicles have a limited capacity and customer demands are uncertain and represented by belief functions. More specifically, this problem is formalized using a belief function based extension of the chance-constrained programming approach, which is a classical modeling of stochastic mathematical programs. In addition, it is shown how the optimal solution cost is influenced by some important parameters involved in the model. Finally, some instances of this difficult problem are solved using a simulated annealing metaheuristic, demonstrating the feasibility of the approach.