Applying genetic algorithm to a new location and routing model of hazardous materials

Nowadays – particularly in systems dealing with hazardous materials (HAZMAT) – in addition to minimising the cost of operations in facility location and routing problems, the risk of these operations is considered an important objective. In this paper, a new mathematical model for the location and routing in facilities and disposal sites is proposed. Also, the risk and cost of transporting goods from facilities to customers is considered. The model minimises weighted sum of the cost and risk by answering these questions: (1) where to open the facilities which produce HAZMAT; (2) where to open disposal sites; (3) to which facilities every customer should be assigned; (4) to which disposal site each facility should be assigned; (5) which route a facility should choose to serve the customers; and (6) which route a facility should choose to reach a disposal site. A novel GA is applied to solve the mathematical model. The results show the robustness of GA in terms of finding high-quality non-dominated solutions and running time.