To overcome the problem of easily falling into local extreme values of the whale swarm algorithm to solve the material emergency dispatching problem with changing road conditions, an improved whale swarm algorithm is proposed. First, an improved scan and Clarke-Wright algorithm is used to obtain the optimal vehicle path at the initial time. Then, the group movement strategy is designed to generate offspring individuals with an improved quality for refining the updating ability of individuals in the population. Finally, in order to maintain population diversity, a different weights strategy is used to expand individual search spaces, which can prevent individuals from prematurely gathering in a certain area. The experimental results show that the performance of the improved whale swarm algorithm is better than that of the ant colony system and the adaptive chaotic genetic algorithm, which can minimize the cost of material distribution and effectively eliminate the adverse effects caused by the change of road conditions.
Keywords: clarke-wright algorithm; material emergency dispatching; road condition change; scan algorithm; whale swarm algorithm.