Int. J. Logistics Systems and Management, Vol. 34, No.

3, 2019 395

Determination of green vehicle routing problem via

differential evolution

Siwaporn Kunnapapdeelert
Burapha University International College,
169 Longhaad Bangsaen Road Saensuk,
Muang, Chonburi, Thailand
Email: siwapornk@go.buu.ac.th

Ratchaphong Klinsrisuk*
Faculty of Environment and Resource Studies,
Mahidol University Salaya,
Nakhonpathom, Thailand
Email: ratchaphong.kli@mahidol.ac.th
*Corresponding author

Abstract: This paper presents the comparison of pickup and delivery with time
window (PDPTW) and green vehicle routing for pickup and delivery problems,
with time windows (Green-PDPTW) by using differential evolution (DE)
algorithm. The main idea of PDPTW is to design the optimal route for
transportation by minimising the total cost. Green-PDPTW aims to design the
route by minimising the emission of direct greenhouse gases, i.e., carbon
dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O). These two concepts
were verified by eight standard benchmark instances. DE algorithm is proposed
to design the optimal route for these two problems. The computational
experiments demonstrate that designing route by minimising greenhouse gases
emission provides cleaner routes than designing routes by minimising total
cost. However, it is not as economical as considering the minimum total cost as
the objective function since it requires more vehicles and total distance than
route that designed based on the minimum total cost concept.

Keywords: differential evolution; DE; vehicle routing problem; VRP;

transportation; green logistics.

Reference to this paper should be made as follows: Kunnapapdeelert, S. and

Klinsrisuk, R. (2019) ‘Determination of green vehicle routing problem via
differential evolution’, Int. J. Logistics Systems and Management, Vol. 34,
No. 3, pp.395–410.

Biographical notes: Siwaporn Kunnapapdeelert is a Lecturer in Burapha

University, International College. She held her Doctoral in Industrial
Engineering and Management at the Asian Institute of Technology. She held
her Masters of Engineering in Industrial Engineering and Management from the
Sirindhorn International Institute of Technology. Her research interests are in
optimisation, supply chain and logistic systems.

Copyright © 2019 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

396 S. Kunnapapdeelert and R. Klinsrisuk

Ratchaphong Klinsrisuk is a Lecturer in Mahidol University. He held his

Doctoral from the Urban Environmental Management in Asian Institute of
Technology. He holds a Masters of Arts in Economics. His research interests
are in environmental management and economics.

1 Introduction

Scientists have been investigating the sources of global warming since the El Niño was
first recognised last century. Such phenomena are said to be caused by the excessive
amount of greenhouse gases (GHG) that are emitted to the atmosphere. According to the
EPA (United States Environment Protection Agency), the global greenhouse gas
emissions come from several sources such as energy supplies, industry, land use, land use
change, and forestry, agriculture, transportation, commercial and residential buildings,
waste and wastewater. European Economic Area (EEA) (2017) reported that road
transport accounts for 72 % of the total greenhouse gas emissions of the sector.
Concept of logistics city is to optimise planning, managing, and controlling the
freight movement within a logistical network in urban areas. Logistical activities include
transportation, the handling and storage of the products, inventory management and
pickup and delivery operations (Taniguchi et al., 2001; Benjelloun and Crainic, 2008) are
optimised by considering various factors such as social, economic, environmental,
financial and energy consumption of urban fright movement (Taniguchi et al., 2001;
Lagorio et al., 2016; Cezarino et al., 2016; Es et al., 2018).
There are various impacts of urban goods transport in current practices
(Gonzalez-Feliu et al., 2014). The French National Urban Goods Movement Program
model (FRETURB) was used to consider the pickup/delivery operation and shopping
trips (number of movements). The model includes four major modules:
1 the estimation of inter-establishment movement
2 final-consumer movement estimation
3 urban management flow generation
4 environmental issue simulation.
They show that the FRETURB can be applied for analysing urban goods movement
effectively.
Cattaruzza et al. (2017) classified and analysed the urban logistics based on the
review of vehicle route optimisation in the cities. It reveals that there are four main
challenges needed to be taken into account: time-dependency, multi-level distribution,
dynamic of the city, and routes with multiple trips. The analysis provides the picture how
the VRPs can improve transportation service level and the liveability of inhabitants at an
acceptable cost.
These confirm that vehicle routing problems (VRPs) couple with environmental issue
related to the pollutant emission must be considered as the main issue in transportation
and logistics management. Several researchers have developed metaheuristics approaches
for solving VRPs however, DE algorithm has not received much attention in previous
studied despite it has been successfully applied to deal with numerous applications.
 Determination of green vehicle routing problem via differential evolution 397

Therefore, the purposes of this study are to investigate the use of DE algorithm for
solving PDPTW and Green-PDPTW and compare the route design from PDPTW and
Green-PDPTW.
The remaining parts of this paper are organised as follows: Section 2 explains the
problem descriptions. Concept of DE algorithm and Green-PDPTW are presented in
Section 3. Section 4 discusses the results obtained from DE algorithm for solving
Green-PDPTW. Finally, Section 5 summarises the results and closes with the suggestion
for further research.

2 Literature review

Transportation is one of the biggest sectors that produce high amounts of GHG
emissions. Therefore, green supply chain, green logistics and green VRPs have been
widely studied by a number of researchers (Carter and Rogers, 2008; Lieb and Lieb,
2010; Kirchoff et al., 2016; Pålsson et al., 2017; Benotmane et al., 2017; Azar et al.,
2017; Choudhary et al., 2017; Baraki and Kianfar, 2017). VRPs concerned with
important operational decisions in transportation, distribution and logistics fields. The
main idea is to design the optimal route for fleets of vehicles to satisfy the customer’s
needs. Numerous variants of VRPs (Goel and Maini, 2017) such as capacitated vehicle
routing problem (CVRP), VRP with time windows (VRPTW), VRP with pickup and
delivery (VRPPD), and multi-depot VRP (MDVRP) have been studied. In green logistics
areas, CVRP combined with the environmental issues have been widely studied.
Kara et al. (2007) applied integer linear programming formulations with O(n2) binary
variables and O(n2) constraints for solving energy minimising vehicle routing problem
(EMVRP). The obtained results were compared to the CPLEX 8.0. It presents that the
proposed approach is applicable for solving EMVRP.
Kuo (2010) proposed simulated annealing (SA) algorithm to determine the total fuel
consumption for time dependent vehicle routing problem (TDVRP). Three factors, i.e.,
transportation distance, transportation speed and loading weight are considered in this
study. The results show that SA for minimising fuel consumption can reduce fuel
consumption 24.61% over minimising transportation time. Further, the proposed
approach consumes lesser fuel than minimising transportation distance by 22.69%. The
string-model-based SA was further developed in 2012 by Xiao et al. for solving fuel
consumption optimisation model for the capacitated vehicle routing problem (FCVRP).
Both CVRP and FCVRP were solved and by the hybrid SA. The results from two
different optimisation purposes were then compared. It indicated that FCVRP can reduce
fuel consumption by 5% over CVRP.
Erdoğan and Miller-Hooks (2012) developed the modified Clarke and Wright saving
(MCWS) and density-based clustering algorithm (DBCA) combine with the customised
improvement for solving green vehicle routing (GVRP). The results from MCWS and
DBCA algorithms were compared to the CPLEX 11.2. It indicates that the CPLEX 11.2
cannot reach the optimal solution in large cases (111 to 500 customers). However, both
MCWS and DBCA algorithms are able to solve GVRP and the results are comparable.
Later, Montoya et al. (2016) presented a multi-space sampling to solve GVRP. At the
beginning, the set of routes are generated. The insertion-based heuristics and
398 S. Kunnapapdeelert and R. Klinsrisuk

neighbourhood are then applied to repair the fuel-infeasible routes. It found that the
proposed algorithm is competitive to the existing approaches.
SA algorithm was developed for solving GVRP again in 2016 by Koç and Karaoglan.
In this study, branch and cut coupled with SA was proposed to design the routes for
GVRP. The computational results present that SA-based exact solution can determine the
suitable route within the reasonable time.
Nowadays, researchers pay more attention to the GVRP. Cheng et al. (2017) studied
the inventory routing problem by considering the environmental issue to minimise total
cost of inventory and transportation. The calculation of transportation cost includes
vehicle fixed cost, driver wage, fuel and emission cost. The fuel and emissions are related
to load, travelled distance, speed and the vehicle characteristics. The mixed-integer is
developed to solve this problem. It found that the amount of CO2 emission is directly
proportional to the total cost. While the increased in fuel price does not affect to the
carbon emission or the environment.
However, the pickup and delivery problem with time windows (PDPTW) with
consideration of environmental issues, so called green vehicle routing for pickup and
delivery problems, with time windows (Green-PDPTW) have not yet to be dealt with.
PDPTW is considered as the generalisation of the VRPTW which is closest to the
real-world situation of daily operation of transport and logistics systems. The idea of this
problem is to design the most suitable route for satisfying the following constraints: the
transportation request under pairing, precedence, vehicle capacity, and time window.
Since VRP is considered as the NP-hard problem which may require high
computational time to find the optimal solution when dealing with large problems.
Subsequently, metaheuristics and evolutionary computing methods such as tabu search
(TS), SA, genetic algorithm (GA), ant colony optimisation (ACO), and particle swarm
optimisation (PSO) have been applied for determining the near optimal solution of the
large scale PDPTW in the reasonable computational time (Nanry and Barnes, 2000;
Cordeau et al., 2001; Wang, 2008; Carabetti et al., 2010; Jung and Haghani, 2000;
Sombuntham and Kachitvichayanukul, 2010).
Differential evolution (DE) algorithm is one of metaheuristics search. It was first
introduced in 1997 by Storn and Price. It is inspired by a biological analogy that
composes of four main process: population initialisation, mutation, crossover, and
selection process. According to the characteristics of DE algorithm, it has an easy
structure, easy, fast convergence rate, and is robust (Das and Suganthan, 2011). It has
also been successfully applied in several fields such as electrical engineering and
industrial engineering (Varadarajan and Swarup, 2008; Arya and Choube, 2013;
Wisittipanich and Kachitvichyanukul, 2011; Wang et al., 2012; Lezama et al., 2012).
Consequently, the comparison of routes designed from two different perspectives,
PDPTW and Green-PDPTW, should be compared and studied.

3 Methodology

3.1 Green vehicle routing problem with pickup and delivery requests
The pickup and delivery problem is to design the optimise vehicle routes to visit each
location, that accomplish the corresponding pickups and deliveries on the same route.
Therefore, this problem is considered as one of the practical problems in VRP. The green
 Determination of green vehicle routing problem via differential evolution 399

pickup and delivery problem with time windows is the focus of this paper. The objective
of the problem is to construct vehicle routes by minimising the GHG emission,
transportation cost, the number of vehicles used for serving customers, and maximising
efficiency under the restrictions below.
1 only one vehicle is allowed to serve each request at a time
2 the capacity of each vehicle must not exceed the legal capacity of the vehicle
3 every route must start and end at the particular terminals
4 number of vehicles used must not be more than the number of available vehicles
5 total time for transportation must not exceed the preset limit.
As mentioned above, the objective of this paper is to minimise the amount of GHG
emitted from transportation. The following section presents a mathematical model for
PDPTW including input parameters and variables used in the model.

3.1.1 Input parameters

P = {1, …, n} is set of pickup nodes
D = {n + 1, …, 2n} refers set of delivery nodes
N = PÈD presents set of all pickup and delivery nodes
Hi denotes penalty cost when request i is not served,
i∈P
K is set of all vehicles |K| = m
Ck presents capacity of vehicle k, k ∈ K
fk refers fixed cost of vehicle k, k ∈ K if it is used
τk is start node of vehicle k, k ∈ K
τ k′ denotes end node of vehicle k, k ∈ K
V = N È {τ1 , ..., τ m } È {τ1′ , ..., τ m′ } is set of all nodes

A refers set of arcs from node i to node j, i, j ∈ V

dij is non-negative distance from node i and node
j, i, j ∈ N
tij presents non-negative travel time from node i to node
j, i, j ∈ N time for travelling satisfy triangle inequality
and tij ≤ til + tlj for all i, j, l ∈ V
Si is service time spent for loading and unloading at node
i
[ai, bi] presents a time windows for node i, a visit to node i
can only occur between this time interval
400 S. Kunnapapdeelert and R. Klinsrisuk

li denotes quantity of goods loaded to the vehicle at node

i when i ∈ P and li = –li–n for i ∈ D
εCO2 represents emission factor of CO2

ε NH 4 denotes emission factor of NH4

ε N 2O is emission factor of N2O.

3.1.2 Decision variables

1 if edge between node i and l is used by vehicle k
xijk = 
0 otherwise
Sik is non-negative integer; service start time of vehicle k at location i ∈ V, k ∈ K
Lik is non-negative integer; upper bound on amount of goods on vehicle k after
servicing node i where i ∈ V, k ∈ K.
1 if the request is placed in the request bank
zi =  ,i∈P
0 otherwise

3.1.3 Mathematical model

Minimise

α  k ∈K (i , j )
dij xijk ( εCO2 + ε NH 4 + ε N 2O ) (1)

Subject to:

α  d x + β   f x + γ
k ∈K (i , j )
ij ijk
k∈K j∈P
k τijk
i=P
H i zi (2)

  x + z = 1, ∀ ∈ P
k ∈K j∈N k
ijk i i (3)

 x −  x = 0, ∀ ∈ K , ∀ ∈ P
j∈V
ijk
j∈V
j n +1 k i i (4)

 j∈P È{ τ k′ }
xτ k jk = 1, ∀k ∈ K (5)

 i∈D È{ τ k }
xiτ′ k = 1, ∀k ∈ K (6)

 i∈V
xijk −  i∈V
x jik = 0, ∀k ∈ K , ∀ j ∈ N (7)

1 if Sik + si + tij ≤ S jk , ∀k ∈ K , ∀(i, j ) ∈ A

xijk =  (8)
0 otherwise
ai ≤ Sik ≤ bi , ∀k ∈ K , ∀(i, j ) ∈ A (9)

Sik ≤ S n + i k , ∀k ∈ K , ∀(i, j ) ∈ A (10)

 Determination of green vehicle routing problem via differential evolution 401

1 if Lik + li ≤ L jk , ∀k ∈ K , ∀(i, j ) ∈ A
xijk =  (11)
0 otherwise
Lik ≤ Ck , ∀k ∈ K , ∀i ∈ V (12)

Lτ k k = Lτk′ k = 0, ∀k ∈ K (13)

xijk ∈ {0, 1}, ∀k ∈ K , ∀(i, j ) ∈ A (14)

zi ∈ {0, 1}, ∀k ∈ P (15)

Sik ≥ 0, ∀k ∈ K , ∀i ∈ V (16)

Lik ≥ 0, ∀k ∈ K , ∀i ∈ V (17)

According to the mathematical model presented above, the objective of this function is to
minimise the GHG emission from the transportation. α, β and γ present the weights that
reflect the relative importance of variable cost, fixed cost, and penalty cost, respectively.
Equation (2) used for minimising total cost. The constraints in equations (3) and (4)
ensure that the pickup and delivery orders are performed by the same vehicle. Equations
(5) and (6) used for confirming that each vehicle departs from its start terminal and end at
its end terminal. Equation (7) is making sure that consecutive paths between τk and τ′k
for each vehicle are constructed. Equations (8) and (9) guarantee that Sik is set correctly
along the paths within the particular time windows and also make sure that sub tours will
not be generated. The condition that each pickup takes place before the corresponding
delivery is ensured by equation (10). Equations (11) to (13) are for assuring that load
variability is precisely set along the path and to confirm the use of the vehicle capacity
constraints. Finally, the nature of decision variables is set up in equations (14) to (17).

3.2 DE algorithm
DE was first introduced in 1997 by Storn and Price for solving optimisation problem over
continuous search spaces. The algorithm was motivated by the development of
evolutionary strategies. It developed for fulfil the following five main requirements.
1 ability to solve non-differentiable, nonlinear and multimodal cost functions
2 parallelisability for dealing with computation intensive cost function
3 there are a few control variables that are robust and easy to choose
4 good convergence properties.
DE algorithm is a parallel direct search approach. The solution is in D-dimensional
vectors. The N population in D-dimensional vectors is initialised over the entire search
space at the beginning of the so-called target vector. The next step is to generate a trial
vector by mutation and crossover processes. In the mutation process, three randomly
chosen vectors are selected from the population of the vectors. A new vector (mutant
vector) is generated by combining the weighted difference between two population
vectors to another vector. The crossover process is then performed, by crossover between
402 S. Kunnapapdeelert and R. Klinsrisuk

the target vector and the mutant vector. Next is the selection process to keep the vector
that provides the better fitness value for competition in the next generation.

3.2.1 Initialisation
At the first stage, the initial population of target vectors must be created. The initial
population X i ,G = X i1,G , ..., X iD,G , i = 1, ..., NP is randomly selected with uniform
distribution from an entire search space. When G represents one generation and NP
denotes number of members in a population. Individual initialised vector for each
generation can be written as:

xij,0 = xmin
j
+ rand (0, 1) ⋅ ( xmax
j j
− xmin ) (18)

where
j j
xmin and xmax are minimum and maximum parameter bounds of jth decision parameter,
respectively
rand(0, 1) is uniformly distributed random number between [0, 1].

3.2.2 Mutation
The mutation process is performed in order to generate a mutant vector, Vi,G as
represented in the following equation:

(
Vi ,G = X r1,i G + F ⋅ X r2,i G − X r3,i G ) (19)

where
r1i , r2i and r3i are mutually exclusive integers that are randomly selected from the
range [1, NP] and also different from index i
F is a real number, so called scaling factor use for controlling the
( )
amplification of the difference vector X r2,i G − X r3,i G .

3.2.3 Crossover
The crossover operation is used for generating the trial vector, U i ,G = U1,1 G , U 2,2 G , ..., U iD,G .
After the mutant vector, Vi,G, is formed, the crossover operation is performed on each pair
of the target vectors, Xi,G, as explained in the following equation:

 vij,G , if rand j [0, 1) ≤ CR or ( j = jrand )

uij,G =  j (20)
 xi ,G , otherwise
 Determination of green vehicle routing problem via differential evolution 403

where
j = 1, 2, …, D
randj[0, 1) is the jth randomly selected from uniform random generator number
CR ∈ [0, 1] is the crossover probability constant.

3.2.4 Selection
The selection operation is to select the vector that provides a better fitness function value.
The comparison of the objective functions between that obtained from the trial vector
f(Ui,G) and target vector f(Xi,G) in the current population are compared. If the trial vector
provides the better fitness function than that, of the target vector, then the trial vector will
replace the target vector and become the population for the next generation. Otherwise
the target vector is retained in the population for the next generation. The selection
process can be expressed below:

U i ,G , if f (U i ,G ) ≤ f ( X i ,G )
X i ,G +1 =  (21)
 X i ,G , otherwise
These three processes, mutation, crossover and selection, are repeated until the specific
termination criteria are satisfied.

3.3 Green vehicle routing for pickup and delivery problems with time windows
(Green-PDPTW)
DE algorithm is applied for solving green vehicle routing for pickup and delivery
problems with time windows (Green-PDPTW) in this work. Fuel consumption and GHG
emission such as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), and nitrous oxide (N2O) from the
transportation based on diesel and liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) are determined and
compared. There are two generally used approaches for calculating GHG emissions
which are fuel-based and distance-based. Determination of GHG emission based on
fuel-based approach is calculated by using the multiplication between fuel consumption
and the emission factor of each GHG on each fuel type. However, GHG emission based
on distance-based approach is computed by multiplying travelling distance by
distance-based emission factor. CO2 emission factors for the former approach are
concerned with various factors such as fuel heat content, fraction of oxidised carbon in
the fuel and carbon content coefficient which is quite difficult to obtain. In the case of the
latter approach, only the travelled distance of the vehicle is used to determine GHG
emission.
The selection of an approach for GHG emission estimation is based on data
availability. Consequently, the distance-based approach is applied for calculating GHG
emission in this work. The calculation of GHG emission based on the distance-based
approach is divided into two main steps. The first step is to collect the data on distance
travelled by vehicle type and fuel type in the form of freight distance (e.g., ton-miles).
The next step is to convert approximated distance into GHG emissions by multiplying the
freight distance by distance-based emission factor as presented in the equation below.
404 S. Kunnapapdeelert and R. Klinsrisuk

CO2 Emission = Distance travelled × Emission factor of CO2 (22)

CH 4 Emission = Distance travelled × Emission factor of CH 4 (23)

N 2 O Emission = Distance travelled × Emission factor of N 2 O (24)

The consumption of energy (litre/100 km) is estimated based on Úbeda et al. (2014)
while the fuel conversion factor for diesel and LPG (kg CO2/litre) are obtained from
Defra (2013). Emission factors of direct GHG such as CO2, CH4, and N2O for diesel and
LPG are illustrated in Tables 1 to 3, respectively.
Table 1 Approximation of CO2 emission factors for ten tones capacity truck

Fuel Emission Emission

Fuel conversion
State of Weight Consumption conversion factor for factor for
factor for diesel
vehicle laden (%) (litre/100 km) factor for LPG diesel (kg LPG (kg
(kg CO2/litre)
(kg CO2/litre) CO2/km) CO2/km)
Empty 0 29.6 2.6569 1.5301 0.786442 0.45291
Low loaded 25 32 0.850208 0.489632
Half loaded 50 34.4 0.913974 0.526354
High loaded 75 36.7 0.975082 0.561547
Full load 100 39 1.036191 0.596739

Table 2 Approximation of CH4 emission factors for ten tones capacity truck

Fuel Emission Emission

Fuel conversion
State of Weight Consumption conversion factor for factor for
factor for diesel
vehicle laden (%) (litre/100 km) factor for LPG diesel (kg LPG (kg
(kg CO2/litre)
(kg CO2/litre) CO2/km) CO2/km)
Empty 0 29.6 0.0009 0.0007 0.000266 0.000207
Low loaded 25 32 0.000288 0.000224
Half loaded 50 34.4 0.00031 0.000241
High loaded 75 36.7 0.00033 0.000257
Full load 100 39 0.000351 0.000273

Table 3 Approximation of N2O emission factors for ten tones capacity truck

Fuel Emission Emission

Fuel conversion
State of Weight Consumption conversion factor for factor for
factor for diesel
vehicle laden (%) (litre/100 km) factor for LPG diesel (kg LPG (kg
(kg CO2/litre)
(kg CO2/litre) CO2/km) CO2/km)
Empty 0 29.6 0.0191 0.0018 0.005654 0.000533
Low loaded 25 32 0.006112 0.000576
Half loaded 50 34.4 0.00657 0.000619
High loaded 75 36.7 0.00701 0.000661
Full load 100 39 0.007449 0.000702
 Determination of green vehicle routing problem via differential evolution 405

4 Results and discussion

The benchmark problems set used in this paper are the instances from Li and Lim (2001)
with more than 100 locations which are used for testing the performance of the DE
algorithm. The benchmark problem used in this work is the problem that, locations of
customers and depots are half-random-half-clustered. The numbers of locations for this
set of instances are in the range of 105 to109. The number of vehicles and capacity of
vehicles are the same with the values of 25 and 200, respectively. Maximum route time
for all problems is unlimited and service times are 0 and 10. The DE parameter set used
in this work are set as follows. Population size and maximum number of iterations of
200 and 500 are set, respectively. Crossover rate (CR) is set to be linearly increasing from
0 to 1. In the case of scale factor (F), it is set at 2. Two types of objective functions
(PDPTW and Green-PDPTW) are applied designing the route based on two types of fuel
used such as diesel and LPG. Main objective of PDPTW is to design the route by
minimising the total cost while Green-PDPTW is trying to design the optimal route by
minimising the direct GHG emissions. The experimental results of DE algorithms for
solving PDPTW and Green-PDPTW are illustrated in Table 4.
The results from DE algorithms are also compared to those of the best-known
solution from the published paper. They present that DE algorithm is capable for solving
PDPTW and Green-PDPTW. However, DE performance might be further improved if the
combination of DE algorithm with local search or other heuristic search are applied.
The empirical results explained that the solutions obtained from Green-PDPTW
require more number of vehicles used and much longer travelled distance than the results
from the economic focus which lead to much higher expense. In case of problems lrc103,
lrc104, lrc105, and lrc106, both PDPTW and Green-PDPTW require the same number of
vehicles used with different route that make not much different total cost. However,
Green-PDPTW can reduce amount of direct GHG emitted to the atmosphere more than
considering total cost in all test cases especially, in problems lrc103 and lrc106, the total
direct GHG emissions can be reduced more than 30%. The results might be changed if
the traffic condition is considered. The larger routes might be obtained when the vehicles
are assigned to use the less congested route for reducing the GHG emission and lead time
for delivery. Considering the types of fuel used, the results present that using LPG is
more environmental friendly than the use of diesel.
The empirical results would be the guideline for the logistics/transportation manager
to select the route that is suitable for the policy of the company. Generally, the company
would design the route by considering minimum total cost as the first priority however a
lot of companies have concerned more about GHG emission. The solution from
Green-PDPTW is more appropriate to design the optimal route in environmental
perspective. Further, comparison of the route from PDPTW and Green-PDPTW in
problem instances lrc103, lrc104, lrc105, and lrc106 revealed that total transportation
costs from both type of problems are comparable. It would be very interesting if both
objective functions are combined as the multi-objective to balance both expense and
greenhouse emission at the same time.
 406

Table 4
Best known CO2 CO2 CH4 CH4 emissions N2O N2O emissions Distance Emission
Objective solution emissions emissions emissions emissions (kg.
Instance Total cost Distance NV (kg. CO2e) (kg. CO2e) increase reduction
function (kg. CO2e) (kg. CO2e) (kg. CO2e) CO 2e) from
Distance NV from LPG from LPG (%) (%)
from diesel from LPG from diesel diesel
lrc101 Minimise cost 1,708.8a 14 141,764.1 1,764.08 14 1,283.753 739.3054 0.434859 0.338222 9.228682 0.8697143 6.15 12.51
Minimise direct N/A N/A 161,873 1,872.64 16 1,123.19 646.843 0.38047 0.29592 8.07442 0.76094
GHG emission
lrc102 Minimise cost 1,558.07b 12 141,783.1 1,783.14 14 1,125.997 648.4621 0.381421 0.296663 8.0946011 0.7628467 23.08 0.23
Minimise direct N/A N/A 172,195 2,194.68 17 1,123.39 646.965 0.38054 0.29598 8.07589 0.76109
GHG emission
lrc103 Minimise cost 1,258.74a 11 131,522.2 1,522.24 13 1,380.089 794.7954 0.467492 0.363608 9.9212258 0.9349923 7.02 30.03
Minimise direct N/A N/A 131,629 1,629.16 13 965.699 556.142 0.32712 0.25443 6.94225 0.65424
GHG emission
lrc104 Minimise cost 1,128.4a 10 111,221.7 1,221.72 11 1,815.664 1045.631 0.615039 0.478362 13.052498 1.2300733 8.51 9.76
Minimise direct N/A N/A 111,326 1,325.74 11 1,638.42 943.563 0.555 0.43167 11.7783 1.11
S. Kunnapapdeelert and R. Klinsrisuk

GHG emission
Comparison of DE and green DE results

lrc105 Minimise cost 1,637.62a 13 151,786.7 1,786.68 15 1,278.679 736.3924 0.433141 0.33689 9.1922053 0.8662874 4.06 16.01
Minimise direct N/A N/A 151,859 1,859.26 15 1,073.94 618.476 0.36379 0.28294 7.72037 0.72757
GHG emission
lrc106 Minimise cost 1,424.73b 11 141,764 1,764 14 1,573.333 906.0808 0.532952 0.41452 11.310423 1.0659077 6.59 30.56
Minimise direct N/A N/A 141,880 1,880.24 14 1,092.57 629.212 0.3701 0.28786 7.85431 0.7402
GHG emission
lrc107 Minimise cost 1,230.14b 11 141,732.3 1,732.29 14 1,474.067 848.9103 0.499326 0.388365 10.596816 0.9986527 28.94 7.73
Minimise direct N/A N/A 162,234 2,233.55 16 1,360.05 783.245 0.4607 0.35832 9.77715 0.9214
GHG emission
lrc108 Minimise cost 1,147.43b 10 121,646.8 1,646.81 12 1,594.691 918.3745 0.540187 0.420144 11.463963 1.08037 0.13 2.14
Minimise direct N/A N/A 131,649 1,648.92 13 1,560.56 898.727 0.52863 0.41116 11.2186 1.05726
GHG emission
a
Source: Li and Lim (2001) and bHasle and Kloster (2007)
 Determination of green vehicle routing problem via differential evolution 407

5 Conclusions and recommendations

Through an empirical experiment of eight benchmark instances for PDPTW and

Green-PDPTW, the study found that DE algorithm can design the route for PDPTW and
Green-PDPTW effectively. There are two major contributions in this study. First, this
study contributes to the literature on DE algorithm for VRPs that have not gain much
attention in the previous researches. The study showed that DE is one of the
metaheuristic approaches that appropriate for solving both PDPTW and Green-PDPTW.
Second, this study emphasises on the comparison of the route designed from PDPTW and
Green-PDPTW. The results demonstrate that the route from PDPTW provides the lower
total transportation cost than Green-PDPTW. Some logistics provider companies have
concerned more about GHG emission that cause by transportation therefore, designing of
the route to deliver products to the customer by considering GHG emission is developed.
The findings of the experiment based on Green-PDPTW provides cleaner routes, rather
than considering total cost as the objective function for all test cases. However, this
requires more total cost than considering the total cost as the objective function. The
reason is the Green-PDPTW requires a greater number of vehicles and longer travelling
distance. Considering the types of fuels used, it is obvious that using LPG is more
environmental friendly than the use of diesel by up to 40%.
This study increased essential implication for both research and practice. It
emphasises two significant management capabilities that contribute to generating a
competitive direct transportation advantage. Although numerous studies have
investigated several metaheuristics for solving VRPs, they have paid less attention to DE
algorithm that is effective for solving VRPs. This study filled that gap by applying DE
algorithm to determine the optimal route in VRPs.
Another implication of this research is associated with two different type of objective
functions for designing the optimal route. The study found that PDPTW provides the
route with the minimum transportation cost but not the best route for the environment;
however, in evaluating Green-PDPTW, the results showed that designing the route by
minimising GHG emission provide the route that is more environmental friendly with a
bit higher transportation cost. This study also provides the practical implication for
logistics/transportation managers. The findings confirm that Green-PDPTW is more
appropriate for the firms that concern more about environment and should be used as the
guideline for planning the route to deliver the product to the customers.
The proposed approach may be applied to real cases with the consideration of traffic
congestion from both peak and off-peak hour including more relevant factors for further
investigation. Another suggestion is that from the viewpoint of an entrepreneur, a balance
between economics and ecological perspectives needs to be found.
408 S. Kunnapapdeelert and R. Klinsrisuk

References
Arya, R. and Choube, S.C. (2013) ‘Differential evolution based technique for reliability design of
meshed electrical distribution systems’, International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy
Systems, Vol. 48, No. 1, pp.10–20.
Azar, A., Zarakani, M., Mirhosseini, S.S. and Masouleh, M.H. (2017) ‘The mediation role of social
capital in relationship between buyer-supplier relationship with green supply chain
collaboration’, International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, Vol. 29, No. 1,
pp.82–101.
Baraki, R.R. and Kianfar, F. (2017) ‘A fuzzy mathematical model for supplier selection and order
allocation considering green vehicle routing problem’, International Journal of Logistics
Systems and Management, Vol. 27, No. 2, pp.151–163.
Benjelloun, A. and Crainic, T.G. (2008) ‘Trends, challenges, and perspectives in city logistics’,
Proceedings Transportation and Land Use Interaction, TRANSLU, Vol. 8, No. 1, pp.269–284.
Benotmane, Z., Belalem, G. and Neki, A. (2017) ‘Towards a cloud computing in the service of
green logistics’, International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, Vol. 29, No. 1,
pp.37–61.
Carabetti, E.G., de Souza, S.R., Fraga, M.C.P. and Gama, P.H.A. (2010) ‘An application of the ant
colony system metaheuristic to the vehicle routing problem with pickup and delivery and time
windows’, in 2010 Eleventh Brazilian Symposium on Neural Networks (SBRN), IEEE,
pp.176–181.
Carter, C.R. and Rogers, D.S. (2008) ‘A framework of sustainable supply chain management:
moving toward new theory’, International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics
Management, Vol. 38, No. 5, pp.360–387.
Cattaruzza, D., Absi, N., Feillet, D. and González-Feliu, J. (2017) ‘Vehicle routing problems for
city logistics’, EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics, Vol. 6, No. 1, pp.51–79.
Cezarino, L.O., Tavares, D.B. and Teixeira, T.R.B.A. (2016) ‘Green logistics as urban
transportation category’, International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, Vol. 25,
No. 2, pp.283–294.
Cheng, C., Yang, P., Qi, M. and Rousseau, L.M. (2017) ‘Modeling a green inventory routing
problem with a heterogeneous fleet’, Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and
Transportation Review, Vol. 97, No. 1, pp.97–112.
Choudhary, A., Mondal, S. and Mukherjee, K. (2017) ‘Analysis of critical factors influencing the
management of green supply chain practice in small and medium enterprises’, International
Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, Vol. 28, No. 2, pp.200–224.
Cordeau, J.F., Laporte, G. and Mercier, A. (2001) ‘A unified tabu search heuristic for vehicle
routing problems with time windows’, Journal of the Operational Research Society, Vol. 52,
No. 8, pp.928–936.
Das, S. and Suganthan, P.N. (2011) ‘Differential evolution: a survey of the state-of-the-art’, IEEE
Transactions on Evolutionary Computation, Vol. 15, No. 1, pp.4–31.
Defra, J. (2013) Environmental Reporting Guidelines: Including Mandatory Greenhouse
Gas Emissions Reporting Guidance, Report, Department for Environment Food & Rural
Affairs, URL [online] https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/environmentalreporting-
guidelines-including-mandatory-greenhouse-gas-emissions-reportingguidance.
EEA (2017) National Emissions Reported to the UNFCCC and to the EU Greenhouse Gas
Monitoring Mechanism Provided by the European Environment Agency, EEA Greenhouse
Gas – Data Viewer, European Environment Agency [online] http://www.eea.europa.eu/data-
and-maps/data/data-viewers/greenhouse-gases-viewer (accessed 17 October 2017).
Erdoğan, S. and Miller-Hooks, E. (2012) ‘A green vehicle routing problem’, Transportation
Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Vol. 48, No. 1, pp.100–114.
Es, H.A., Hamzacebi, C. and Firat, S.U.O. (2018) ‘Assessing the logistics activities aspect of
economic and social development’, International Journal of Logistics Systems and
Management, Vol. 29, No. 1, pp.1–16.
 Determination of green vehicle routing problem via differential evolution 409

Goel, R. and Maini, R. (2017) ‘Vehicle routing problem and its solution methodologies: a survey’,
International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management, Vol. 28, No. 4, pp.419–435.
Gonzalez-Feliu, J., Toilier, F., Ambrosini, C. and Routhier, J.L. (2014) ‘Estimated data production
for urban goods transport diagnosis’, in Sustainable Urban Logistics: Concepts, Methods and
Information Systems, pp.113–143, Springer, Berlin Heidelberg.
Hasle, G. and Kloster, O. (2007) ‘Industrial vehicle routing problems’, in Hasle, G., Lie, K-A. and
Quak, E. (Eds.): Geometric Modelling, Numerical Simulation, and Optimization, Springer,
ISBN. 978-3-540-68782-5.
Jung, S. and Haghani, A. (2000) ‘Genetic algorithm for a pickup and delivery problem with time
windows’, Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board,
Vol. 1733, No. 1, pp.1–7.
Kara, L., Kara, B. and Yetis, M. (2007) ‘Energy minimization vehicle routing problem’, Lecture
Notes in Computer Science, Vol. 4616, No. 1, pp.62–71.
Kirchoff, J.F., Tate, W.L. and Mollenkopf, D.A. (2016) ‘The impact of strategic organizational
orientations on green supply chain management and firm performance’, International Journal
of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Vol. 46, No. 3, pp.269–292.
Koç, Ç. and Karaoglan, I. (2016) ‘The green vehicle routing problem: a heuristic based exact
solution approach’, Applied Soft Computing, Vol. 39, No. 1, pp.154–164.
Kuo, Y. (2010) ‘Using simulated annealing to minimize fuel consumption for the time-dependent
vehicle routing problem’, Computers & Industrial Engineering, Vol. 59, No. 1, pp.157–165.
Lagorio, A., Lagorio, A., Pinto, R., Pinto, R., Golini, R. and Golini, R. (2016) ‘Research in urban
logistics: a systematic literature review’, International Journal of Physical Distribution &
Logistics Management, Vol. 46, No. 10, pp.908–931.
Lezama, F., Castañón, G. and Sarmiento, A.M. (2012) ‘Differential evolution optimization applied
to the wavelength converters placement problem in all optical networks’, Computer Networks,
Vol. 56, No. 9, pp.2262–2275.
Li, H. and Lim, A. (2001) ‘A metaheuristic for the pickup and delivery problem with time
windows’, in Proceedings of the 13th International Conference on Tools with Artificial
Intelligence, Dallas, TX, USA [online] http://ww.simtef.no/Projectweb/TOP/Problems/
PDPTW/Li--Lim-benchmark/ (accessed 3 January 2016).
Lieb, K.J. and Lieb, R.C. (2010) ‘Environmental sustainability in the third-party logistics (3PL)
industry’, International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Vol. 40,
No. 7, pp.524–533.
Montoya, A., Guéret, C., Mendoza, J.E. and Villegas, J.G. (2016) ‘A multi-space sampling
heuristic for the green vehicle routing problem’, Transportation Research Part C: Emerging
Technologies, Vol. 70, No. 1, pp.113–128.
Nanry, W.P. and Barnes, J.W. (2000) ‘Solving the pickup and delivery problem with time windows
using reactive tabu search’, Transportation Research Part B: Methodological, Vol. 34, No. 2,
pp.107–121.
Pålsson, H., Pålsson, H., Winslott Hiselius, L., Winslott Hiselius, L., Wandel, S., Wandel, S.,
Khan, J., Khan, J., Adell, E. and Adell, E. (2017) ‘Longer and heavier road freight vehicles in
Sweden: effects on tonne-and vehicle-kilometres, CO2 and socio-economics’, International
Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management, Vol. 47, No. 7, pp.603–622.
Sombuntham, P. and Kachitvichayanukul, V. (2010) ‘A particle swarm optimization algorithm for
multi-depot vehicle routing problem with pickup and delivery requests’, in Proceedings of the
International Multi-Conference of Engineers and Computer Scientists, Vol. 3.
Storn, R. and Price, K. (1997) ‘Differential evolution – a simple and efficient heuristic for global
optimization over continuous spaces’, Journal of Global Optimization, Vol. 11, No. 4,
pp.341–359.
Taniguchi, T., Ogasawara, K., Takaoka, A. and Tanaka, N. (2001) ‘IRF family of transcription
factors as regulators of host defense’, Annual Review of Immunology, Vol. 19, No. 1,
pp.623–655.
410 S. Kunnapapdeelert and R. Klinsrisuk

Úbeda, S., Faulin, J., Serrano, A. and Arcelus, F.J. (2014) ‘Solving the green capacitated vehicle
routing problem using a tabu search algorithm’, Lecture Notes in Management Science, Vol. 6,
No. 1, pp.141–149.
Varadarajan, M. and Swarup, K.S. (2008) ‘Differential evolutionary algorithm for optimal reactive
power dispatch’, International Journal of Electrical Power & Energy Systems, Vol. 30, No. 8,
pp.435–441.
Wang, D.X., Wen, X.L. and Wang, F.L. (2012) ‘A Differential evolutionary algorithm for flatness
error evaluation’, AASRI Procedia, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp.238–243.
Wang, Y. (2008) ‘Study on the model and tabu search algorithm for delivery and pickup vehicle
routing problem with time windows’, in IEEE International Conference on Service Operations
and Logistics, and Informatics, IEEE/SOLI 2008, IEEE, Vol. 1, pp.1464–1469.
Wisittipanich, W. and Kachitvichyanukul, V. (2011) ‘Differential evolution algorithm for job shop
scheduling problem’, Industrial Engineering and Management Systems, Vol. 10, No. 3,
pp.203–208.
Xiao, Y., Zhao, Q., Kaku, I. and Xu, Y. (2012) ‘Development of a fuel consumption optimization
model for the capacitated vehicle routing problem’, Computers & Operations Research,
Vol. 39, No. 7, pp.1419–1431.