24 results

Nature Inspired Optimisation for Delivery Problems: From Theory to the Real World

Book
Urquhart, N. (2022)
Nature Inspired Optimisation for Delivery Problems: From Theory to the Real World. Cham: Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-98108-2
This book explains classic routing and transportation problems and solutions, before offering insights based on successful real-world solutions. The chapters in Part I introdu...

Simulating Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problems with Athos

Conference Proceeding
Hoffman, B., Guckert, M., Chalmers, K., & Urquhart, N. (2019)
Simulating Dynamic Vehicle Routing Problems with Athos. In Proceedings of the 33rd International ECMS Conference on Modelling and Simulation ECMS 2019, (296-302). https://doi.org/10.7148/2019-0296
Complex routing problems, such as vehicle routing problems with additional constraints, are both hard to solve and hard to express in a form that is accessible to the human ex...

Simulating the actions of commuters using a multi-agent system

Journal Article
Urquhart, N., Powers, S., Wall, Z., Fonzone, A., Ge, J., & Polhill, G. (2019)
Simulating the actions of commuters using a multi-agent system. Journal of Artificial Societies and Social Simulation, 22(2), https://doi.org/10.18564/jasss.4007
The activity of commuting to and from a place of work affects not only those travelling but also wider society through their contribution to congestion and pollution. It is de...

Athos - A Model Driven Approach to Describe and Solve Optimisation Problems

Conference Proceeding
Hoffman, B., Chalmers, K., Urquhart, N., & Guckert, M. (2019)
Athos - A Model Driven Approach to Describe and Solve Optimisation Problems. https://doi.org/10.1145/3300111.3300114
Implementing solutions for optimisation problems with general purpose high-level programming languages is a time consuming task that can only be carried out by professional so...

A new rich vehicle routing problem model and benchmark resource

Conference Proceeding
Sim, K., Hart, E., Urquhart, N. B., & Pigden, T. (2018)
A new rich vehicle routing problem model and benchmark resource. In Advances in Evolutionary and Deterministic Methods for Design, Optimization and Control in Engineering and Sciences. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-89988-6_30
We describe a new rich VRP model that captures many real-world constraints, following a recently proposed taxonomy that addresses both scenario and problem physical characteri...

Towards reducing complexity of multi-agent simulations by applying model-driven techniques

Conference Proceeding
Hoffman, B., Chalmers, K., Urquhart, N., Farrenkopf, T., & Guckert, M. (2018)
Towards reducing complexity of multi-agent simulations by applying model-driven techniques. In Y. Demazeau, B. An, J. Bajo, & A. Fernández-Caballero (Eds.), Advances in Practical Applications of Agents, Multi-Agent Systems, and Complexity: The PAAMS Collection. PAAMS 2018, 187-199. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-94580-4_15
Creating multi-agent simulations is a challenging task often requiring programming skills at the professional software developer level. Model driven methods of software develo...

A Domain-Specific Language For Routing Problems

Conference Proceeding
Hoffmann, B., Hoffman, B., Guckert, M., Farrenkopf, T., Chalmers, K., & Urquhart, N. (2018)
A Domain-Specific Language For Routing Problems. In L. Nolle, A. Burger, C. Tholen, J. Werner, & J. Wellhausen (Eds.), Proceedings of the 32nd EUROPEAN CONFERENCE ON MODELLING AND SIMULATIONhttps://doi.org/10.7148/2018-0262
Vehicle Routing Problems (VRPs) are commonly used as benchmark optimisation problems and they also have many applications in industry. Using agent-based approaches to solve VR...

Demo paper: AGADE - Scalability of ontology based agent simulations

Conference Proceeding
Farrenkopf, T., Guckert, M., Urquhart, N. B., & Wells, S. (2016)
Demo paper: AGADE - Scalability of ontology based agent simulations. In Advances in Practical Applications of Scalable Multi-agent Systems. The PAAMS Collection (256-259). https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-39324-7_25
Simulations of real world scenarios often require considerably large numbers of agents. With increasing level of detail and resolution in the underlying models machine limitat...

Multi-Modal employee routing with time windows in an urban environment.

Conference Proceeding
Urquhart, N. B., Hart, E., & Judson, A. (2015)
Multi-Modal employee routing with time windows in an urban environment. In Proceedings of the 2015 Genetic and Evolutionary Algorithms Conference (1503-1504). https://doi.org/10.1145/2739482.2764649
An urban environment provides a number of challenges and opportunities for organisations faced with the task of scheduling a mobile workforce. Given a mixed set of public and ...

Creating optimised employee travel plans.

Conference Proceeding
Urquhart, N. B. & Hart, E. (2014)
Creating optimised employee travel plans
8 results

Cloud based distribution system to tackle food poverty

2022 - 2023
Local food sectors, e.g. Foodbanks, still rely on paper-based referral systems whilst continuing to see increasing demand. In addition, the model of direct hand-outs of food parcels and electricity vo...
Funder: Scottish Funding Council | Value: £570

Bus Passenger Analytics

2020 - 2020
Passengers using the Lothian Buses network may use a smart card (Ridacard) to pay for their journey, swiping the card on boarding a vehicle. Smart card journeys account for about 1/3rd of journeys mad...
Funder: Data Lab | Value: £26,170

Caddie Charger

2014 - 2014
Focusing on the IT aspects of sound recognition and analysis. The product will be used to monitor the players  playing golf shots using a mixture of location, wi-fi and sounds technologies. Through us...
Funder: Scottish Funding Council | Value: £4,950

BeeFound

2014 - 2014
A demonstrator has been created which showcases a ranking algorithm and availability matching. Currently discussions are ongoing regarding a follow on project.
Funder: Scottish Funding Council | Value: £5,000

AvantGuarde

2014 - 2014
Workshop style sessions were held with Avant Garde, their work so far was reviewed and issues relating to performance were examined. We were able to make specific  suggestions to address a number of i...
Funder: Scottish Funding Council | Value: £5,000

Optimum order of deliveries within milk rounds

2013 - 2014
This project is being undertaken in collaboration  with McQueens Dairies. The principle aim is investigate the optimisation of drop-off points within milk rounds. The project will establish a suitable...
Funder: Scottish Funding Council | Value: £5,000

Esave Feasibility Study

2012 - 2012
This project undertook the following tasks: 1) An analysis of the existing work flow within the energy audit process used by esave on behalf of their clients. 2) The specification and design of a...
Funder: Scottish Funding Council | Value: £5,000

Tick2Ride Proof of Concept

2007 - 2008
The project looked at using optimisation techniques to plan business travel (i.e. journey sharing) and reduce its environmental impact. Both soft constraints (personal preferences) and hard const...
Funder: Scottish Enterprise | Value: £102,836