An Open-Source Desktop Application for Generating Arc-Routing Benchmark Instances

Optimization algorithms and heuristic procedures for arc-routing problems often use benchmark instances to validate and demonstrate performance. Ideally, these benchmark instances capture the features of real-world street networks. Typically, benchmark instances are artificially generated and only approximate real-world networks. We develop a software tool that allows users to generate arc-routing instances directly from an open-source, user-driven map database. Our tool gives the user the ability to edit the instances by hand or by using configurable parameters. The instances generated by our tool can then be exported for use by researchers. In addition, our tool has a visualization capability that can produce images of routes overlaid on the instance.

The online supplement is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/ijoc.2017.0785.