Sector design for snow removal and disposal in urban areas

Snow removal and disposal are important and expensive winter operations in many cities. When a large amount of snow accumulates in an urban area and impedes traffic, the snow must be removed to snow disposal sites. This paper first briefly describes snow disposal operations in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It then presents models and efficient algorithms for partitioning a city into sectors for snow disposal operations, and for assigning the sectors to disposal sites. These algorithms are incorporated in a decision support system (DSS) built on a geographic information system. The DSS provides initial solutions, and allows the planner to interactively design sectors to incorporate difficult constraints. Results and some sensitivity analyses are presented for the City of Montreal.