Research article

The support unit location problem to road traffic surveys with multi-stages

Federal University of Rio de Janeiro – UFRJ Alberto Luiz Coimbra Institute for Graduate Studies and Research in Engineering – COPPE, Av. Horácio Macedo, 2030, Cidade Universitária, 21941-450 Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

^* Corresponding author: gmr.ribeiro@gmail.com

Received: 22 March 2017
Accepted: 30 October 2017

Abstract

Large countries with extensive road networks, such as Brazil, require large volumes of financial resources to perform traffic surveys. In Brazil, the biggest road traffic survey was performed in 2011 with 120 counting survey stations. This survey was divided into three stages and 83 support units provided survey teams. A support unit is a place, such as a military organization, close to the survey stations. A stage indicates that only some survey stations must be considered at a time. In large scale traffic surveys with multi-stages, we must define which support unit will serve each survey station so that travel costs for the survey teams and the costs to use the support units are minimized. We present the Support Unit Location Problem to Assist Road Traffic Survey with Multi-Stages where, given a set of available support units, each one with a coverage area, and a set of multi-stage traffic survey stations, we must select units to serve stations so that the cost is minimized. Scenarios are evaluated for a real traffic survey with 300 counting stations and four stages in Brazil. Computational experiments show that large cost reductions can be found when a mathematical model is used.