Grant: Engage Grants Program

Colibri Software builds custom software for companies, many of which need more efficiency in theirtransportation systems. They have customers in numerous sectors, and for many of these customers, optimalroute planning is important. The proposed research project will help Colibri better answer its customers' needsfor software that can aid their route planning. The outcomes of this will address a specific need Colibri has andallow them to better service their customers.This project will develop software to find optimal routes and schedules to find the best way to pick upagri-products and deliver them to their destinations. In addition to the usual optimality concerns (shortest time,least cost, and so on) this application area also has the requirement to get food items to market whileminimizing potential spoilage. The project seeks to develop a system allowing a collection of farmers to getproducts to a collection of markets in the most cost-effective way possible. This project is applicable in manyareas including agriculture, tourism and also transportation. The company has customers in two of these areas,and they hope to use the results of this project to provide more economical solutions to their problems andenhance the software available through the algorithms developed as a result of this project.Dr. Jim Diamond, with Acadia's Jodrey School of Compute Science, has a specialty in the area of graph theoryalgorithms and has applied and developed this knowledge in various areas, including government R&D,industry and academia.A successful outcome will help make travel more efficient and help plan more economical use of resources.Understanding how route planning can be made more amenable to a larger customer base through simple