A branch-and-bound-based solution approach for dynamic rerouting of airborne platforms

This article is a sequel to a recent article that appeared in this journal, "An extensible modeling framework for dynamic reassignment and rerouting in cooperative airborne operations" [17], in which an integer programming formulation to the problem of rescheduling in-flight assets due to changes in battlespace conditions was presented. The purpose of this article is to present an improved branch-and-bound procedure to solve the dynamic resource management problem in a timely fashion, as in-flight assets must be quickly re-tasked to respond to the changing environment. To facilitate the rapid generation of attractive updated mission plans, this procedure uses a technique for reducing the solution space, supports branching on multiple decision variables simultaneously, incorporates additional valid cuts to strengthen the minimal network constraints of the original mathematical model, and includes improved objective function bounds. An extensive numerical analysis indicates that the proposed approach significantly outperforms traditional branch-and-bound methodologies and is capable of providing improved feasible solutions in a limited time. Although inspired by the dynamic resource management problem in particular, this approach promises to be an effective tool for solving other general types of vehicle routing problems. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics, 2013