Minimization of passenger takeoff and landing risk in offshore helicopter transportation: Models, approaches and analysis

• Published in: Omega (Oxford) Vol. 51; pp. 93 - 106
• Main Authors: Qian, Fubin, Strusevich, Vitaly, Gribkovskaia, Irina, Halskau, Øyvind
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford Elsevier Ltd 01.03.2015; Pergamon Press Inc
• Subjects: Bin-packing; Helicopter transportation; Heuristics; Machine scheduling; Occupational safety; Offshore oil wells; Operations research; Optimization algorithms; Studies; Takeoff and landing risk; Worst-case analysis; Norway; Worst-case analysis; Machine scheduling; Bin-packing; Heuristics; Helicopter transportation; Takeoff and landing risk
• ISSN: 0305-0483; 1873-5274
• DOI: 10.1016/j.omega.2014.09.002

Offshore petroleum industry uses helicopters to transport the employees to and from installations. Takeoff and landing represent a substantial part of the flight risks for passengers. In this paper, we propose and analyze approaches to create a safe flight schedule to perform pickup of employees by several independent flights. Two scenarios are considered. Under the non-split scenario, exactly one visit is allowed to each installation. Under the split scenario, the pickup demand of an installation can be split between several flights. Interesting links between our problem and other problems of combinatorial optimization, e.g., parallel machine scheduling and bin-packing are established. We provide worst-case analysis of the performance of some of our algorithms and report the results of computational experiments conducted on randomly generated instances based on the real sets of installations in the oil fields on the Norwegian continental shelf. This paper is the first attempt to handle takeoff and landing risk in a flight schedule that consists of several flights and lays ground for the study on more advanced and practically relevant models. •Offshore petroleum industry uses helicopters to transport employees.•Takeoff and landing risk represents a substantial part of total risks.•We propose and analyze approaches to create a safe flight schedule.•Both split and non-split scenarios are considered.•We provide worst-case analysis on some of our algorithms and report the results.