Bee Colony Optimization and Approaches to Transportation Engineering

Bee colony optimization (BCO), that is heavily inspired by the analogy of bee behaviours in collecting nectar in the nature can be an appropriate method for solving combinatorial optimization problems. This paper is trying while provides an overview of using BCO to solve the travelling salesman problem, present a framework for the implementation of BCO in a step-by-step algorithm, flowchart or pseudo-code for solving a wide range of combinatorial optimization problems in transportation engineering. Also some potential applications of BCO are introduced by surveying the capabilities of this algorithm. In fact, this paper seeks to provide a very practical way to implement Bee Colony Optimization and introduce a number of applications of this approach in transportation engineering.