ant colony algorithm

Due to the importance of manufacturing and production systems issues in modern businesses, in recent years, many magazines and researchers have focused their research on this field. Manufacturing and production is an emerging pattern in which production resources are hardware (handling materials, equipment, tools and machines, computers), software (computer-aided design, computer-aided production) and production capabilities (ability design, production, maintenance, repair, management, simulation, optimization) is virtualized and available to users in the entire manufacturing and production cycle and allows the joint use of production systems and resources produced at the global level. Manufacturing and production based on new technologies is a solution that enables users to receive their requests in different layers with optimal timing. Therefore, the main goal of this research is to provide a mathematical model to optimize the production output function in dynamic manufacturing and production systems. For this purpose, the researcher first conducted a comprehensive and complete study of the research literature, and after collecting the information, he selected and developed the initial model, and in the second phase of the research, he started by obtaining statistical information and data from the relevant statistical community, to build the model. Its original and initial test was done. Since the problem of optimizing the production output function in dynamic manufacturing and production systems is included in the NP-hard category, it means that for such problems, a quick and feasible solution has not been found in a reasonable time from the genetic algorithm and ant colony in MATLAB software was used and through the tools and methods of solving and analyzing them, the questions of the current research were given a suitable and optimal answer.

Drought is one of the most significant natural hazards which affects various aspects of human life with its gradual, slow and creeping occurrence. As a disastrous climate phenomenon, it directly impacts on human communities through making changes in access to water resources, and imposes enormous economic, social and environmental costs on various communities. One of the strategies governments always use to compensate the damages that droughts impose on various economic, social and environmental sectors is to include special financial loans in the form of grants, special development credits, special structural projects, and so on. Therefore, in this regard, a lot of financial aids have been allocated by the government for it. But, sometimes, it is observed that the allocation and distribution of drought credits among different cities of the province have been more influenced by political, ethnic, and religious interests rather than by the severity of the drought and its detrimental effects on various economic, agricultural, and social sectors. Therefore, in this study, it has been tried to present a method based on an optimization model in order to take a step in optimizing the management of drought budget based on realities in Sistan and Baluchestan province in south-east of Iran. In this study, the indicators proposed by the Cabinet of Ministers of the Islamic Republic of Iran for reducing the effects of drought were applied to manage the optimal distribution of drought budgets among the cities of Sistan and Baluchestan province in southeast of  Iran. These indicators were population, having urban and rural drinking water, vulnerability of water resources, surface area under cultivation, number of users of agricultural sector, annual consumption of agricultural water, and rainfall. Using the figures given in the 2011 statistical yearbook, numerical values ​​for each of these indices were obtained. But given that these indices are not of equal importance in each city and some may be more important in one city and less important in another, the Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) technique using paired comparison method was applied to determine the relative importance of these indices in Sistan and Baluchestan province. Using this technique, a relative weight was determined for each of these indicators and for each city. In addition to determining the weight of these indices, it was needed to convert droughts in the province to numerical values. In this study, to analyze droughts in Sistan and Baluchestan province, Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI), which is one of the proposed indicators of World Meteorological Organization (WMO) has been used for a period of 30 years (1984-2014) and for 6 synoptic stations. The results of drought analysis in Sistan and Baluchestan province in an annual scale showed that the frequency distribution of different drought levels in Sistan and Baluchestan province has not been uniform, with the most droughts occurring in this 30 year period in northern part of the province (Zabol and Zahedan) including 14 and 13 repeated cases; respectively, with the lowest in central part of Baluchistan (Khash and Saravan) including 11 repeated cases. But, what should be noted after the frequency of droughts is the persistence and durability of droughts. As a result, weak but long-lasting droughts can be much more damaging than severe but short-lived droughts. Sistan and Baluchestan province has been under drought with varying degrees of severity from the water year of 1998-1999 to the water year of 2005-2006. But in the meantime, the north of Sistan and Baluchestan province (Zabol station) has a condition which is very different from other parts of the province. The north of Sistan and Baluchistan province has been experiencing severe droughts for 14 years from the year 1999-2000 to 2012-2013 with the exception of the year 2004-2005. It has been the long-term drought persistence in the province that has caused many environmental, economic and social problems, such as the drying up of Lake Hamoun and the water reduction in the Hirmand River in the north of the province, and severe reduction of groundwater resources in central Baluchistan. Therefore, given that Sistan and Baluchestan province has experienced 7 years of continuous drought between the two water years of 1998-1999 to 2009-2010, these seven years were chosen as examples, and the ant colony algorithm was implemented on them. Based on the selected criteria and the proposed method, it seems that the combination of Analytic hierarchy process (AHP) technique and Ant colony algorithm can formulate an intelligent system to determine the priority of the cities in Sistan and Baluchestan province during droughts for allocating the optimal budget and reducing the harmful effects of droughts. Based on the prioritization maps of optimal drought budget allocation among the cities in Sistan and Baluchestan province, an almost good agreement can be observed between the results and the realities existing in the province.

Applying of two systems Light Rail Transit and Bus Rapid Transit as skeleton of public transport has been defined in Mashhad city. There are problems in the line routes of the system including about 50 percent coverage with each other along their routes that this problem reduces the system's coverage. This research is done with the aim of re-designing of the mentioned routes with a view to maximizing system access. Research method is both qualitative and quantitative and it is applied research. To reform the public transport skeleton routes a mathematical modeling approach is applied using ant colony algorithm. Then combined access index using Hansen method has been calculated divided to 253 traffic zones and in two different cases, system status quo and the system proposed by research. The population access, the places of employment and attractive land uses were have noticed on calculating the mentioned index. The research data were obtained from database of comprehensive transportation study of Mashhad which was update at 2013 using documentary study. Improved routes of public transit skeleton have been defined as the results of this research that they have no coverage with each other so the system coverage is increased while their overall length is less than the approved routes. Also the access index significantly increased in case of modified system compare with the primary one. Given that the existing public transit skeleton system has been designed with methods based on movement, the results of this research reveals differences between the methods based on movement and access in case of designing of public transport.

Promptness of relief groups and especially, of inter- cities ambulances has a vital role in their performance during unpredicted disasters. In this regard, optimal routing of these groups seems necessary in order to cover maximum population centers. For this purpose, the use of artificial intelligence and the so-called “new routing algorithms,” and its localization among inter/ intra- cities sections, based on their extent and spread, can be an efficient way for efficient urban management and relief organization. Therefore, the aim of this study was to show the practical application of ant colony algorithm for optimizing routing and minimizing the travelled distance .In this research, the case study was performed on over 29 urban and rural points, originated in Parsabad city, in MATLAB and shown in the GIS environment. The proposed model in this paper can not only be used to analyze the issue, but it also can be used to optimize the routing of distribution of basic goods in cases of natural and human disasters, traffic problem, and so on. Need to note that in the proposed method, the Rolette wheel Selection method is used for random selection of the neighborhoods.The results showed that due to the limited area of the case study, time and quality of achieving to optimal route in ant colony algorithm were calculated 0.19 ms faster than the Experimental Method, whereas, given the movement of 30 ants, the time required to arrive to the scene by the ambulances for ant colony algorithm and the Experimental Method was calculated 19' 45'' and 27' 15'', respectively.

The location of Fire stations plays an important role in the efficiency of these facilities during fire accidents. Therefore, in order to maximize the coverage of these stations to population centers, proper locating of these fire stations seems necessary. On the other hand, locating of fire stations and allocating population to them is a combinatorial optimization problem. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to integrate geographic information system and a meta-heuristic algorithm based on ant colony algorithm for optimal site selection of fire stations. For this purpose, a case study was carried out in five regions of Tehran. In this study, suitable areas were firstly identified by analytical hierarchical process method which is a common multi-criteria decision making method. For this purpose, access to the main transportation routes, proximity to compatible land uses, and staying away from incompatible land uses were considered as criteria. Furthermore, the coverage of the existing stations was also considered in the final map. Then the suitable stations were selected from the prone options by the proposed ant colony algorithm. In order to select these stations, parameters include incorporating proper distance among fire stations and maximizing the population that can be served by these fire stations in the standard time, were considered. The computational results reveal that the proposed algorithm can obtain high quality solutions to such problems in a short time. The results of this paper also reveal the efficiency of this method in the optimal locating of fire stations.