Snow disposal operations optimization in winter highway maintenance

Under limited maintenance resources, the optimal snow disposal operation to restore capacity of highway in time, is an important decision making problem of highway maintenance in winter. Based on fluidity of snow disposal teams, a time-space network model of snow disposal operation planning was designed, which can accommodate temporal and spatial moves of snow disposal teams. In term of time windows of maintenance segments of highway and cooperation among multiple teams, a snow disposal operation planning model based on time-space network was brought up. Computational result of an example was obtained with LINGO software, where region responsibility strategy and region cooperation strategy were compared in disposal snow duration. Region cooperation strategy can improve utilization efficiency of maintenance resources adequately, to restore transportation of highway in a shorter time.