A heuristic approach to reduce carbon dioxide emissions

Transport accounts for 26% of global carbon dioxide emissions. The need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, especially carbon dioxide, is thus becoming increasingly urgent and several approaches have been adopted to achieve this goal. Alternative sustainable technologies form one possible solution, and changes in driving styles could also contribute to a reduction in emissions. An alternative interesting approach is to reduce vehicle miles travelled. In this paper, the concept of vehicle miles travelled reduction based on a heuristic optimisation approach and geographical information system technology is introduced. The suitability of the concept was tested with the school bus routing problem. Working mechanisms of the adopted optimisation algorithms are explained. The results show that optimisation of bus stops, bus routes and driving schedules could significantly reduce the amount of vehicle miles travelled and, consequently, carbon dioxide emissions.