Optimal Flow Distribution of Military Supply Transportation Based on Network Analysis and Entropy Measurement

Abstract

One important element of military supply transportation is concealment, especially during war preparations and warfare periods. By introducing entropy to calculate the transportation concealment degree, we investigate the issue about concealed military supply transportation on the whole road network and propose an optimal flow distribution model. This model's objective function is to maximize the concealment of military supply transportation. After analyzing the road network, classifying different nodes, summarizing the constraint conditions based on the properties and assumptions in the transportation process, and combining the general parameter limits, the optimal flow distribution model is further transformed into a calculable non-linear programming model. Thus, based on this non-linear programming model, we can obtain the optimal distribution scheme of military supply transportation from the perspectives of network analysis and concealment measurement. Lastly, an example of military supply transportation in Jiangsu province, China is illustrated to prove the feasibility of the proposed model. The managerial implication is that by utilizing the proposed flow distribution model, military supplies can be efficiently transported to the required destinations based on maximizing the concealment degree. Not only this model can be utilized in the real military supply transportation, it can be also applied in other transportation fields which require time efficiency and concealment.

Modeling and Planning Multimodal Transport Paths for Risk and Energy Efficiency Using AND/OR Graphs and Discrete Ant Colony Optimization

“…Constraint (11) ensures that there can be only one mode of transportation between two adjacent multimodal transport nodes, where, D 2ij / 2 = 1 represent or relationship between i and j. 0 0.5 (12) represents the max probability of multimodal transport path risk, which must be less than 0.5.…”

“…The opening time was determined by calculating the entropy value and entropy generation of the boundary road network. Zhou et al [11] introduced entropy to calculate the concealment degree of transportation, studied the concealment problem of military supply transportation in the whole network, and proposed the optimal flow distribution model. He et al [12] studied the cluster of departure and destination (OD) trips and adopted entropy theory and probability distribution functions for parameter selection.…”

Multiscale Price Lead-Lag Relationship between Steel Materials and Industry Chain Products Based on Network Analysis

“…The complex network method is originated from Watts and Strogatz [ 11 ], who study the nature of “small-world” of a network, and Barabasi and Albert [ 12 ], who study the scale-free nature of network. Then more and more researchers focus on this method and introduce this method into other fields, such as biology network [ 13 ], transportation network [ 14 , 15 ], finance network [ 16 , 17 ], and trade network [ 18 , 19 ]. Through abstracting relationships between entities in the real world to nodes and edges of a network, this method can analyze the topological features and the importance of nodes and edges in the network, thereby reflecting the nature and influence of entities in the real-world system.…”

Correction: Zhou et al. Optimal Flow Distribution of Military Supply Transportation Based on Network Analysis and Entropy Measurement. Entropy 2018, 20, 446

“…In the original publication [1], there was a mistake in Figure 5 as published. First and foremost, the authors sincerely apologize for the confusion this error has caused.…”