A Two Phase Approach for Inter-Terminal Transport of Inland Vessels Using Preference-Based and Utility-Based Coordination Rules

While inland vessels are becoming more important in container transport between terminals in the port and the hinterland, in a large sea port like port of Rotterdam, only 62% of the inland vessels leave the port on time. Poor alignment of inland vessels leads to significant uncertainty in waiting times of vessels at terminals, low utilization of terminal quay resources, and long sojourn time of vessels in the port. To improve this, it is important to find the sequences in which vessels visit different terminals in an efficient way. This paper presents a novel approach to find the visiting sequence of groups of inland vessels in a large seaport with the objective of better alignment of activities. The approach consists of two phases, namely single vessel optimization and multiple vessel coordination. The single vessel optimization problem is first solved using mixed integer programming, preference-based and utility-based coordination rules are then used to solve the multiple vessel coordination problem. We evaluate the performance of the proposed approach with respect to departure time of the last vessel, total sojourn time and waiting time. Simulation results show improvements with earlier departure time, as well as much shorter sojourn time and waiting time.