Routing Daily Water Meter Collection - Arclogistics?

[PatrickFangmeyer]

Hello;

We have Wi-Fi meter reading from municipal vehicles moving at ten MPH. We have a basic routing network based upon centerlines and address points. The problem I am trying to solve is how to create routes for the work week for our fleet to traverse the network and collect every meter within the 30 day billing cycle. And then each subsequent billing cycle the data collection repeats. Based upon 8 hour days, we need to route from the starting point to the first days worth of collection. Then the second day should ignore those collected the first day and collect 8 hours worth. Third day the same and so on.

I originally tried loading the sample data locations (5811) as stops, running the entire one route solution, and then selecting the edges used in said route to calculate time based upon distance versus a global speed limit of 10mph. But this isn't going to help optimizing daily and I see other inherent problems selecting the data in the order in which it was traversed.

Also looking at the time elements and time windows, the Out of the box Network Analyst doesn't seem to support the daily routing of a fleet, each day, for a 30 day window. I admit I am slightly perplexed as to how to implement the time windows when you can enter a starting time but no end time.

So any advice anyone can give or experience they have had using the Network Analyst will be appreciated. I have really just started using it for routing in our county and they have asked for this complicated solution which seems level ten in terms of complexity. Please also note we do not have a vendor who is supplying a front end user interface so I am wondering if that is the only way to solve this type of complicated issue. I have seen some cursory info on Arc Logistics so I would appreciate any input for this as a solution as well.

[JoeBorgione]

Sounds like a 'Chinese Postman' problem; I'm not sure if ArcLogisitics is based on Network Analyst, but I've never known of an ESRI solution.

Ordering Stops

Shortest Route problem

rkistner/chinese-postman · GitHub

Jay Sandhu​

[PatrickFangmeyer]

Thanks for the info Joe. I appreciate the prompt response. We are going to look into ArcLogistics in the meanwhile to see what it entails. I assume it does using network analyst and viewing some of the help files it seems like it builds off of that to complete some of the higher end algorithms and complicated routing users tend to need for everyday business use.

[JaySandhu]

You mention a few things that are not clear:

>Also looking at the time elements and time windows, the Out of the box Network Analyst doesn't seem to support the daily routing of a fleet, each day, for a 30 day window. I admit I am slightly perplexed as to how to implement the time windows when you can enter a starting time but no end time.

In the VRP solver, you can enter as many routes/vehicles as needed. So lets say you have two vehicles and need to keep them busy for 30 days, then add 60 routes/vehicles as Vehicle1Day1, Vehicles2Day2, Vehicle1Day2, etc. You can set up the start/end times for the vehicles to limit it 8 hours. Now when you solve you have work for each vehicle for each of the 30 days.

Each order can have two time windows. Each time window has a start and end time. See the Order Properties here:

http://desktop.arcgis.com/en/desktop/latest/guide-books/extensions/network-analyst/vehicle-routing-p...

As Joe mentioned, this may require a different solution (Chinese Postman) as opposed to the VRP solver in the Network Analyst extension. But I suggest that you try to solve this using the VRP solver and then evaluate the results. Model your problem as 5811 orders, one warehouse, one vehicle for each of the 30 days and solve.

Jay