A New Innovative Method for Solving Traveling Salesman Problem

Routing issues have many applications in GIS. The main goal in routing is to find the best route passing a series of determined positions. This process has an effective role in many of spatial decision makings. A lot of studies have been accomplished about the optimization of different kinds of routing problems. Traveling Salesman Problem is one of the very old issues in applied sciences. Emerging of new technologies such as GIS caused a lot of new applications for the TSP. A lot of new approaches have been suggested using these technologies to solve TSP. Evolutionary algorithms are one of the methods have been used to solve various optimization problems. Researches have shown that combining local search methods with the genetic operators can lead to better results in solving TSP. In this paper، a new and innovative method is presented to solve this routing problem. In this method using the concept of mass center for a set of station points a growing convex polygon is assigned to them. During this process a reliable solution، which is a route، is produced. Besides، a local search method based on the genetic algorithm and a nearest neighbor algorithm has been implemented to evaluate the results of the new developed method in solving TSP. Evaluation of the results of the genetic method، local search and nearest neighbors indicate that the new method can provide acceptable solutions during very short time.