Minimizing CO2 emissions in a practical daily carpooling problem

Governments, as well as companies and individuals, are increasingly aware of the damages to the environment caused by human activities. In this sense, the reduction of CO2 emissions is an important topic that is pursued through a range of practices. A relevant example is carpooling, which is defined as the act of individuals sharing a single car. In this paper we approach a practical case found in an Italian service company. Our objective is to develop an integrated web application to be used by the employees of this company to organize carpooling crews on a daily basis, so as to reach a common destination. We look for possible crews by the use of mathematical formulations and heuristic algorithms. The heuristic algorithms are then embedded into the web application to provide users with carpooling solutions. Experimental results attest for a great potential in CO2 savings by the use of carpooling in the real-world scenario as well as in newly generated instances.