An evolutionary approach for finding optimal automatic vehicle identification reader locations in transportation networks

A modified distance-based genetic algorithm is proposed to solve the multi-objective automatic vehicle identification (AVI) reader location problem studied in this paper. The objectives are: (1) minimizing the number of AVI readers, (2) maximizing the coverage of origin-destination (O-D) pairs, and (3) maximizing the number of AVI readings. These three objectives are strategically designed to catch the maximum number of trips covering the maximum number of AVI readers. In order to study the trade-off among the three objectives, non-dominated solutions are retained and analyzed. The results show that there is a trade-off between the quality (measured by objectives 2 and 3) and cost (measured by objective 1) of coverage.