Distribution route optimisation of emergency supplies based on improved grey wolf optimisation algorithm

The trade-off between the timely delivery of emergency supplies and the long distribution path distance can be described as a generalised multiple travelling salesman problem. To solve this problem, the IDGWOA was proposed to minimise the longest distribution path. Taking the data of several lockdown zones in Pudong, Shanghai, as an example, 10 optimal material distribution routes were obtained by simulation. The results showed that the average distribution route distance was about 22.5 km and the longest distribution distance was 26.40 km. The results verified the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, realising a reasonable guarantee of supply distribution. Finally, four standard travelling salesman problem datasets were used and the results were compared with five other intelligent optimisation algorithms. The results showed that the relative error value index of the improved algorithm was the smallest for the same dataset, indicating that the algorithm achieves the highest accuracy.