The multicommodity network flow problem: state of the art classification, applications, and solution methods

Over the past decades, the Multicommodity Network Flow (MCNF) problem has grown popular in the academic literature and a growing number of researchers are interested in this field. It is a powerful operational research approach to tackle and solve many complicated problems, especially in transportation and telecommunication contexts. Yet, few literature reviews have made an effort to classify the existing articles accordingly. In this article, we present a taxonomic review of the MCNF literature published between 2000 and 2019. Based on an adapted version of an existing comprehensive taxonomy, we have classified 263 articles into two main categories of applications and solution methods. We have also analyzed the research interests in the MCNF literature. This classification is the first to categorize the articles into this level of detail. Results show that there are topics, which need to be addressed in future researches.