PLUMBER, A PIPELINE TRANSPORTATION PLANNER
Ruy L. Milidiu
Frederico dos Santos Liporace

Departamento de Informatica
Pontif´icia Universidade Catolica do Rio de Janeiro
Rio de Janeiro, RJ, Brazil

Email: fmilidiu,liporaceg@inf.puc-rio.br


ABSTRACT

Most transportation problems consist of moving carriers
of stationary cargos. Pipelines are unique in the sense
that they are stationary carriers of moving cargos. As a consequence,
the planning problem of these systems has singularities
that make it very challenging.
In this paper we present the Pipesworld model, a
transportation problem inspired by the transportation of
petroleum derivatives through Petrobras’ pipelines, and
Plumber, a dedicated planner for Pipesworld instances.
Plumber combines general purpose artificial intelligence
techniques with a dedicated simulator. We discuss how
simulation is important for the planning process, and how
it enables the planner designer to incrementally increase
the problem complexity. We report the results obtained by
Plumber so far, and how it will be extended to deal with operational
scenarios.