Vehicle Sharing System Pricing Regulation: A Fluid Approximation

Ariel Waserhole (1) , Vincent Jost (1)

1 G-SCOP_ROSP - Recherche Opérationnelle pour les Systèmes de Production

We study self regulation through pricing for Vehicle Sharing Systems (VSS). Without regulation VSS have poor performances. We study possible improvements of the VSS using (pricing as) incentive. We take as base model a Markovian formulation of a closed queuing network with finite buffer and time dependent service time. This model is unfortunately intractable for the size of instances we want to tackle. We present a fluid approximation, constructed by replacing stochastic demands by a continuous deterministic flow (keeping the demand rate). It gives a deterministic and continuous dynamics and evolves as a continuous process. The fluid model can be thought of as the limit of a scaled Markovian model, in which the fleet, the station capacities and the demands are scaled by a common factor. A reusable benchmark and an experimental protocol is created for the general Vehicle Sharing System optimization problem. We discuss the convergence of the scaled model to the fluid limit. We conduce some experimental studies.

Domaines: Recherche opérationnelle [math.OC]

Ariel Waserhole, Vincent Jost. Vehicle Sharing System Pricing Regulation: A Fluid Approximation. 2012. ⟨hal-00727041v4⟩