Micro-simulation for the management of vehicles fleet in restricted area

The paper introduces the use of microscopic simulation for managing a fleet of vehicles operating in a restricted area. The simulator developed is an object oriented tool which is able to virtually reproduce the real traffic conditions of restricted urban network. It’s based on a multi agent traffic flow model where each agent has to perform a specific task within a strategic predefined plan. The simulator is applied to the selected garbage collection in an area of the old historical city centre of Genoa. The specific characteristics of the area with very narrow streets and quite severe slopes constitute a interesting case of study either for the dynamic of the vehicles motion and for the diversification of the vehicles operating the service, in terms of physical dimensions, loading capacity and autonomy (also more autonomous electrical vehicles may be considered). A fleet management strategies consist of the allocation of each vehicle to a specific type of garbage, a specific set of collections points and a specific route. The target is testing different management strategies without having to implement them on the real traffic network The test of a fleet management strategy is based on the global system condition after the simulation period as well as on each vehicle performances. Information about the more inefficient vehicles constitutes a worth input for improving the management strategy