Energy Allocation in Rural Transport Using Fuzzy Optimization Techniques

Abstract

Transport is one of the most important components of infrastructure so far as the growth process of an economy is concerned. In this study, all the purposes of transportation are divided into two categories, one is passenger transport and other is goods transport. The distances are classified by seven groups for passengers and four groups for goods by distance covered. Diesel, petrol and human energy are used for passenger transport while animal energy, human energy and diesel are considered for goods transport. Minimization of total cost of direct energy, Minimization of non-local energy and Minimization of total time are the three objectives which are optimised under nine sets of real constraints. A compromised solution to all these three objective functions has been obtained by using Multi Objective Fuzzy Linear Programming (MOFLP) approach. The model is applied on the analysed data collected by primary and secondary survey from Narayangarh Block of West Medinipur District in the state of West Bengal in India. In transport sector, there is very little scope to alter the modes but to introduce new modes, this model has been found to quite effective in selecting origin, destination and distance ranges including intervening stoppage points.