Determining the number and location of winter road maintenance depots – a case study of the district road network in Serbia

ABSTRACT

Determining the number and location of depots for winter road maintenance (WRM) represents one of the important strategic decisions while planning WRM activities. However, most organizations dealing with WRM make empirically based decisions. Optimizing the number and location of WRM depots has the potential to achieve considerable cost savings, improve mobility and efficiency, as well as reduce environmental impacts. This paper presents two optimization models. The first model determines the location of WRM depots by minimizing the total distance travelled by maintenance vehicles. The second model determines the optimum number and location of WRM depots by minimizing total transportation costs and capital expenditure and operational expenditure of the depots. The models are then applied to the district road network in Serbia. Results show that their application could lead to significant reductions in WRM costs.

KEYWORDS:

• Winter road maintenance
• depots
• location problem
• P-median problem
• Serbia

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Draženko Glavić http://orcid.org/0000-0002-0069-2153

Marina Milenković http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7931-0586

Miloš N. Mladenović http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3746-3573