An MIP-heuristic approach for solving multiobjective helicopter flight scheduling in an oil and gas company
Angelo Aliano Filho et al.
Abstract
Oil and gas extraction from offshore platforms usually requires regular helicopter transport to shuttle personnel to these remote sites. Effective organization and scheduling of flights to these maritime units ensure uninterrupted services, enhance operational efficiency, and guarantee service continuity. However, flights are subject to disruptions and might require rescheduling. To assist with decision-making in such situations, we present optimization approaches based on a discrete-time multiobjective integer linear optimization problem. This problem focuses on rescheduling flights from previous days into the current day’s flight schedule, aiming to minimize: (i) transferred flights to upcoming days; (ii) reduce helicopter usage; (iii) the total flight delay. Solving this problem using classic multiobjective scalarization methods for real instances takes several hours. This motivated the development of an MIP-heuristic that efficiently exploits special characteristics of this problem. Numerical results using data from a Brazilian company and in randomly generated instances showed the effectiveness of the proposed approach, producing a variety of high-quality solutions and consuming around 8% of the effort of an exact solution method. A strong conflict between these objectives was also observed. The trade-off analysis carried out made it possible to quantify how much the prioritization of the level of service (objectives (i) and (iii)) impacts helicopter costs and vice versa. Disregarding the subjectivity of the weight given to each goal, the proposed approach and technique proved to be effective in this context, capable of offering a wide range of alternative solutions to help the decision-maker choose a safe decision. • A multiobjective discrete time for the ARP for helicopter flights is proposed. • Three objectives were considered: minimize the number of transferred flights, helicopter use, and delay. • A new MIP-heuristic is proposed to solve this problem in a short time. • Approximations for efficient solutions can be obtained with 8% of the exact method. • A detailed trade-off analysis was performed showing the gain and losses in the objectives values.
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
| M · momentum | 0.50 × 0.15 = 0.07 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.