Towards Optimizing the Logistic Transportation Selection in Hajj

Abstract

The Hajj is an international Islamic event that takes place in Mecca, Saudi Arabia, annually and attracts millions of pilgrims. One of the most important services during the Hajj period is pilgrims' transportation services, they transport pilgrims between the holy sites (e.g., walking facilities, traditional buses, shuttle buses, and the holy sites train). The shuttle bus, among these services, is the busiest for Hajj. It operates during the Hajj and transports most of the pilgrims. For example, during the first Muzdalifah holiday, when on the ninth-day pilgrims move from Arafat to Muzdalifah, the transportation serves more than one million pilgrims. Therefore, there are many transportation companies, and choosing an appropriate company is one of the most important challenges facing Hajj organizers. There are many criteria for selecting transportation companies, such as cost and service quality; therefore, this paper presents a framework that uses the NSGA-III optimization algorithm to choose the best companies based on two objectives (e.g., costs and quality of service). The results of NSGA-III have been compared with heuristic algorithms (e.g., best fit and first fit), and NSGA-III outperformed these algorithms.