Zone-Based Fuel Distribution

Product Used: Route Optimization API

Background

Consider a fuel distributor operating out of 1 depot with three tanker trucks for delivering fuel to gas stations across the city. Each truck is assigned the responsibility for serving gas stations within specific zones. to ensure drivers operate in familiar regions while the fleet workload is balanced geographically. Without zone-aware routing, vehicles may be assigned deliveries outside their designated service areas, creating operational inefficiencies and policy violations.

Problem Statements

In order to plan routes for fleet trucks so that they always serve to gas stations falling within pre-defined zones, fuel dispatchers need to overcome following challenges:

Restrict deliveries outside individual zones

The depot is responsible for delivering fuels to the gas stations falling in all zones. However, there are specific trucks assigned to each zone for which it can accept deliveries and should not be used for delivering fuel to stations outside the zones which may lead to inefficient routing, operational non-compliance etc.

Constantly changing zone definitions

Zone definitions, including their associated depots or stations, more often than not undergo quarterly or annual updates. These modifications are driven by shifts in seasonal demand, market dynamics, pricing changes, or weather conditions. It is crucial that zone configurations are straightforward otherwise the planning workflow would need to be rebuilt from scratch every quarter, making it inefficient and unsustainable for maintenance.

Solution

NextBillion.ai supports zone-based routing configuration and allows dispatchers to define service zones and control which vehicles can perform deliveries in them. This is achieved using configurable zones, job-zone mapping, and vehicle zone permissions.

Define service areas using zones

The API allows users to define operational regions using zones, which are specified using GeoJSON geometry. These zones represent geographic areas such as service regions within a city.

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"zones":[
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       {
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           "id":3,
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           "geometry":{
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               "type": "Polygon",
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               "coordinates": [
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         [
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           [
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             -118.31940492986033,
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             34.07436165553014
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           ],
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           [
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             -118.34426546073624,
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             34.05184406614292
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           ],
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           [
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             -118.33517223035614,
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             34.04681912409657
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           ],
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           [
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             -118.33367768165154,
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             34.03554112455345
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           ]
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         ]
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       ]
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           }
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       }
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   ]
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Map jobs to individual zones

Once zones are defined, delivery jobs can be associated with a zone using the jobs.zones parameter. Alternatively, the Route Optimization API can automatically determine which zone an order belongs to when both zone definition and order's location are configured.

Restrict vehicle operations to specific zones

The API allows vehicles to be configured with zone permissions that determine where they can operate. Two parameters control this behavior:

vehicle.allowed_zones - These define the zones where a vehicle is permitted to perform delivery tasks. During optimization, vehicles will only be assigned deliveries located within their allowed zones.

vehicle.restricted_zones - These define zones where a vehicle is not allowed to perform deliveries.

A sample zone permission configuration:

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{
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           "id": "Fuel Truck 1",
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           "start_depot_ids":["Fuel Depot 1"],
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           "allowed_zones":[1],
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           "restricted_zones": [2,3],
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}

Sample Request and Response

Following is a JSON request that we built for this case and the corresponding response.

API Request

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curl --location 'https://api.nextbillion.io/optimization/v2?key=<your_api_key>' --header 'Content-Type: application/json' --data '{...}'

API Response

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{
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  "description": "Zone Based Fuel Distribution",
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  "result": '{...}',
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  "status": "Ok",
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  "message": ""

By combining GeoJSON-based zone definitions, job-zone mapping, and vehicle-zone permissions, the routing system can generate delivery plans that respect operational service boundaries while still allowing vehicles to travel efficiently across the city. This approach enables fuel distributors to maintain organized zone-based fleet operations while ensuring that route optimization remains flexible and efficient.