A comparison of algorithms for origin–destination matrix generation on real road networks and an approximation approach

This paper considers the generation of the origin–destination (OD) matrix, basic data in any vehicle routing or traveling salesman problem. An OD matrix must be generated by calculating the shortest paths between some nodes. Candidate methods for this are repetitive use of one-to-all shortest path algorithms such as Dijkstra’s algorithm, use of all-to-all shortest path algorithms such as the Floyd–Warshall algorithm, and use of specifically designed some-to-some shortest path algorithms. This paper compares the performance of several shortest path algorithms in computing OD matrices on real road networks. Dijkstra’s algorithm with approximate bucket data structure performed the best for most of the networks tested. This paper also proposes a grouping-based algorithm for OD matrix generation. Although it is an approximation approach, it has several good characteristics: it can find the exact shortest distances for most OD pairs; it guarantees that all the calculated shortest path distance values have corresponding paths; the deviation of any distance from the corresponding true shortest distance is small; and its computation time is short.