Problem of Patient Transport Route Planning for Battery Electric Vehicles Considering a Flexible Charging Strategy

Abstract

In view of the current problem of non-emergency patient transport route planning, the research is mainly carried out on fuel vehicles, and in the related research on the vehicle routing problem of electric vehicles, the relevant research results considering flexible charging strategies of different charging technologies are relatively weak. Therefore, this paper studies the non-emergency patient transport route planning problem based on pure electric vehicles, introduces a flexible charging strategy, constructs a mathematical model with the goal of maximizing the average patient satisfaction and minimizing the total cost of patient transport, and designs a hybrid heuristic algorithm to solve the problem. Then, different algorithms are used to solve the mathematical model considering patient satisfaction and the mathematical model not considering patient satisfaction. The feasibility and applicability of the mathematical model and the hybrid algorithm are verified by comparing and analyzing the solution results of different algorithms. Finally, based on the hybrid heuristic algorithm, the mathematical model of non-emergency patient transport route planning considering different charging strategies is solved. The applicability and reliability of the hybrid algorithm are further verified by comparing the solution results of different charging strategies, which shows that the flexible charging strategy can not only achieve a better balance between patient satisfaction and the total cost of patient transport, but also effectively improve the utilization efficiency of the remaining power of the vehicle.