Definition of Temporal Uncertainty

The instances presented here are, admittedly, relatively easy as deterministic Pickup and Delivery Problems with Time Windows. What makes them interesting is what we term "Temporal Uncertainty". This means that each job is known fully in terms of its location and a pre-announced time window at the start of operations, but during operations that pre-announced time window will likely change and will only be confirmed a short time prior to the actual start of service. As such, in addition to the job locations (both pickup and dropoff) and the actual time windows, each instance contains a pre-announced time window and a confirmation time for each job. These instances were designed to be used with dynamic routing strategies.

The following graphic depicts the time events noted above with the goal of clarify the temporal events in our PDPTW instances.