Closed-loop coordination of inland vessels operations in large seaports using hybrid logic-based benders decomposition

Abstract

This paper addresses two coordination problems that exist in the waterborne transport in large seaports, the long time of stay of inland vessels and insufficient terminal and quay crane planning with respect to their sailing schedules. A novel coordination model is proposed and tackled using logic-based Benders decomposition and Large Neighborhood Search. In addition, a closed-loop perspective is taken, in which possible disturbances that may occur are considered. Simulation results show that our approach can scale to real-world sizes and provide better schedules for inland vessels within the port. The potential of using inland vessels for inter-terminal transport is also extensively investigated.