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Alçada Tomás de Almeida, Luís Miguel

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  • Multi-objective model for optimizing railway infrastructure asset renewal
    Publication . Sousa, Nuno; Almeida, Luís Alçada; Rodrigues, João Coutinho
    A multi-objective model for managing railway infrastructure asset renewal is presented. The model aims to optimize three objectives, while respecting operational constraints: levelling investment throughout multiple years, minimizing total cost and minimizing work start postponements. Its output is an optimized intervention schedule. The model is based on a case study from a Portuguese infrastructure management company, which specified the objectives and constraints, and reflects management practice on railway infrastructure. The results show that investment levelling greatly influences the other objectives and that total cost fluctuations may range from insignificant to important, depending on the condition of the infrastructure. The results structure is argued to be general and suggests a practical methodology for analysing trade-offs and selecting a solution for implementation.
  • Large scale railway renewal planning with a multiobjective modeling approach
    Publication . Sousa, Nuno; Almeida, Luís Alçada; Rodrigues, João Coutinho
    A multiobjective modeling approach for managing large scale railway infrastructure asset renewal is presented. An optimized intervention project schedule is obtained considering operational constraints in a three objectives model: evenly spreading investment throughout multiple years, minimizing total cost, minimizing work start postponements on higher priority railway sections. The MILP model was based on a real world case study; the objectives and constraints specified by an infrastructure management company. Results show that investment spreading greatly influences the other objectives and that total cost fluctuations depend on the overall condition of the railway infrastructure. The model can produce exact efficient solutions in reasonable time, even for very large-sized instances (a test network of similar size to the USA railway network, the largest in the world). The modeling approach is therefore a very useful, practical methodology, for generating optimized solutions and analyzing trade-offs among objectives, easing the task of ultimately selecting a solution and produce the works schedule for field implementation.