Variable Neighborhood Decomposition for Large Scale Capacitated Arc Routing Problem

In this paper, a Variable Neighborhood Decomposition (VND) is proposed for Large Scale Capacitated Arc Routing Problems (LSCARP). The VND employs the Route Distance Grouping (RDG) scheme, which is a competitive decomposition scheme for LSCARP, and generates different neighborhood structures with different tradeoffs between exploration and exploitation. The search first uses a neighborhood structure that is considered to be the most promising, and then broadens the neighborhood gradually as it is getting stuck in a local optimum. The experimental studies show that the VND performed better than the state-of-the-art RDG-MAENS counterpart, and the improvement is more significant when the subcomponent size is smaller. This implies a great potential of combining the VND with small subcomponents.