Optimizing Alternative Routes Retrieval in an Agent-based Transportation Management System

This paper reports on issues raised during the development of an intelligent Web-based system for transportation services. Our approach exploits software agents technology to efficiently handle simple or modular transportation requests. The agents involved in the proposed system represent and act on behalf of two basic types of users involved in a transportation scenario, that is, for customers looking for the appropriate way to ship their products, and for transportation companies (carriers) that may - fully or partially - carry out such requests. Particular attention is paid to the construction of modular transportation solutions, that is solutions that fragment the itinerary requested to a set of sub-routes that may involve different transportation means. The corresponding algorithm and tool developed for this process are comprehensively presented