ON AN APPROACH TO EVALUATE THE TRANSPORTATION RELIABILITY OF A MULTICOMMODITY FLOW NETWORK

摘要

Given a probabilistic flow network with the unique supply node s and the system demand (d_1,d_2,...,d_p) at the sink t where d_i denotes the required demand amount of ist type commodities for all 1 <= i <= p where p > 1, an approach to calculate the probability that sufficient commodities of such p types can be transported from s to t via the flow network to satisfy the system demand (d_1,d_2,...,d_p). Such a probability, denoted by R_(d_1,d_2,...,d~p), is called the transportation reliability of the network. An algorithm is proposed first to find out all lower boundary points for (d_1,d_2,...,d_p) in terms of minimal paths (MP). R_(d_1,d_2,...,d~p) can then be calculated in terms of such lower boundary points for (d_1,d_2,...,d_p) by applying the Inclusion-Exclusion method.