Multi-objective last-mile routing laboratory
An optimisation laboratory for comparing last-mile delivery routes across distance, time, cost, emissions, service quality, and workload-balance objectives.
Project definition
Problem statement
A route that minimises total distance may create late deliveries, overloaded vehicles, uneven driver workloads, or additional emissions under congestion and vehicle differences.
The mathematical problem is to formulate competing objectives and operational constraints, generate valid solutions, and show the Pareto tradeoffs rather than hiding them inside one unexplained score.
Project objectives
- Model a selected road graph, depots, orders, vehicles, capacities, service times, time windows, and working limits.
- Formulate distance, travel time, operating cost, emissions proxy, lateness, and workload-balance objectives.
- Implement baseline, exact or bounded, constructive, local-search, and selected metaheuristic methods.
- Generate and compare Pareto-efficient solutions under fixed computational budgets.
- Test sensitivity to demand, traffic, failed delivery, vehicle, and objective-weight scenarios.
System design
System modules
Problem builder
Defines graph, depots, customers, demand, vehicles, constraints, service rules, and objective functions.
Distance and time engine
Creates valid route matrices from prepared networks and time-dependent travel assumptions.
Solver workbench
Runs baseline, OR-Tools, exact small-instance, and selected heuristic methods with recorded seeds and budgets.
Pareto analyser
Identifies non-dominated solutions and measures objective spread, dominance, and tradeoff changes.
Routing dashboard
Shows routes, loads, schedules, violations, convergence, Pareto fronts, and scenario comparisons.
Methodology
System workflow
- 01Load instance
The student selects a prepared city network, orders, fleet, service constraints, and objective definitions.
- 02Verify data
Reachability, units, capacities, time windows, and basic feasibility bounds are checked.
- 03Run methods
Solvers process the same instance under fixed time, iteration, and seed budgets.
- 04Compare tradeoffs
Valid solutions are evaluated against every objective and displayed on the Pareto front.
- 05Stress test
Traffic, demand, vehicle loss, failed delivery, or objective preferences are varied and rerun.
Demonstration scenario
A prepared Bengaluru delivery instance uses two vehicle types, capacities, time windows, and shift limits. One solution minimises distance but creates late stops, while another reduces lateness and balances workload at additional cost. The Pareto view makes the tradeoff explicit and reruns it under peak traffic.
Engineering
Technical architecture
- Web application
- Nuxt and Vue for problem setup, route maps, schedules, convergence, Pareto plots, and export.
- Optimisation API
- FastAPI for instances, matrix jobs, solver runs, constraint checks, scenarios, and results.
- Spatial data layer
- PostgreSQL and PostGIS for prepared graphs, locations, instances, routes, schedules, and metrics.
- Algorithm engine
- Python, OR-Tools, and NetworkX for routing baselines, constraints, search, and graph operations.
- Experiment design
- Versioned instances, solver budgets, random seeds, feasibility checks, lower bounds, and repeated runs.
Testing
Evaluation
Evaluation measures
- Constraint satisfaction and independent route-feasibility checks
- Objective values against manually calculated and exact small instances
- Optimality gap or lower-bound gap where available
- Pareto-front quality, diversity, and dominance across methods
- Runtime, convergence, success rate, and result variability
- Sensitivity to traffic, order demand, fleet, time windows, and objective preferences
System boundaries
- The project uses prepared or permitted map and delivery data and does not expose customer information.
- Travel time, cost, emissions, and service behaviour use documented planning assumptions.
- The optimiser supports research and does not dispatch real vehicles or drivers.
- Operational deployment requires live-data validation, labour and safety rules, local restrictions, and human oversight.
Included
- 01Depot, vehicle, order, network, and objective interface
- 02Routing, constraint, Pareto, and scenario modules
- 03Route maps, objective tradeoffs, convergence, and comparison views
- 04Prepared Indian urban delivery instances, baselines, and results
- 05Complete source code in a private GitHub repository
- 06Complete project documentation with synopsis, abstract, methodology, mathematical formulation, algorithm results, screenshots, and conclusion
- 07Setup and usage guide
Project record
No buyer information is collected on this page.
- Permanent project ID
- GP-MA-16W9NUC
- Catalogued
- 21 Aug 2026
- Completed
- Pending
- Verified
- Pending
- Demonstration
- Added when ready
Handover
After purchase
- 01Payment is confirmed
The project is marked unavailable and cannot be purchased again.
- 02Repository access is granted
The buyer's submitted GitHub account receives access to the private repository.
- 03The purchase record is delivered
The certification sheet is prepared from the reviewed buyer details and sent privately by email.