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[REMINDER] RAS Problem Solving Competition - Registration deadline approaching soon!!

  • 1.  [REMINDER] RAS Problem Solving Competition - Registration deadline approaching soon!!

    Posted 05-08-2019 10:19
    Dear INFORMS community,

    Registration deadline for the 2019 RAS (Railway Applications Section) Problem Solving Competition is May 17th 2019. Details of the competition can be found here.

    Problem summary:

    Integrated train blocking and shipment path optimization (TBSP)

    An essential problem in freight rail transportation is how to efficiently deliver shipments moving between different origin destination pairs on a capacity-constrained physical rail network. In this competition participants will be asked to determine a minimum-cost shipment plan given a demand of shipments with their corresponding origin and destination which satisfies operational system constraints. The shipment plan must answer the following questions: (1) what pairs of stations should have direct train services between them? (2) what are the frequencies for these train services? (3) what is the path (sequence of stations) for each train service? (4) what is the itinerary (sequence of blocks) of each shipment to get to its final destination?

    Full problem description and competition data sets can be found here.


    Please direct all questions to: railwayapplicationssection@gmail.com

    Thank you!

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    Andrea Arias
    Sr. Operations Research Scientist I
    BNSF Railway
    Fort Worth TX
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