A PathRelinkingapproachfortheTeamOrienteeringProblem

This paperintroducesaPathRelinkingmetaheuristicapproachforsolvingtheTeamOrienteeringProblem (TOP), aparticularroutingprobleminwhichascoreisearnedforvisitingalocation.Theobjectiveisto maximise thesumofthescores,whilenotexceedingatimebudget Tmax for travellingtotheselected locations. InthecaseofthesimpleOrienteeringProblem(OP),asinglerouteconnectingallselected locations shouldbefollowed;inTOP m routes arerequiredandthelengthofeachrouteisrestrictedto Tmax. Afastandaslowvariantoftheapproacharetestedusingalargesetoftestinstancesfromthe literature; theyarecomparedtootherstate-of-the-artapproaches.Thefastvariantachievesanaverage gap of0.39%tothebestknownsolutionsin5.0sofcalculationtime,whiletheslowvariantachieves a 0.04%gapwithin272.8s.Moreover,nexttoachievingmostofthebestknownsolutionsformany testproblems, theslowvariantimprovedthebestknownresultsinfiveinstances.