Route Optimization System

This final year project is focused on creating a route generation application that can
find the best route on a real road network. The distinct lack of route optimization
systems or route generation system in Malaysia was the motivational factor behind
this project. It is a collaborative project between another final year student and me. I
will be concentrating on finding the best algorithm for calculating the shortest
distance between two points on a digital map. After much research into the many
algorithms available, and considering some, including Genetic Algorithm (GA), the
author selected Dijkstra's Algorithm (DA). This algorithm is an exact algorithm that
is specifically for finding the shortest route in a network. It has been used in other
networks beside roads, for instance, pipe networks or railway networks. The method
used to develop this project is Rapid Application Development (RAD). Using that
process, we have settled on Java as our development platform as we found it able to
both implement DA and the GIS component (map display and manipulation). The
software that we came up with allows the user to select a point of origin on the map
and a destination point and expect the software to highlight the best route onthe map
as well as output the road names in that route, from the origin to the destination. It
will also give the user the total distance from origin to destination. It does not take
into account the amount of time that the drivermight take to travel that distance. This
project is just the first step in creating a more robust route generation system for the
Malaysian market. The potential for this project to be propagated on a mobile
platform can also be considered due to its Java platform.