Optimising cargo loading and ship scheduling in tidal areas

Le Carrer, Noemie ORCID: 0000-0002-6057-2057, Ferson, Scott ORCID: 0000-0002-2613-0650 and Green, Peter L (2020) Optimising cargo loading and ship scheduling in tidal areas. EUROPEAN JOURNAL OF OPERATIONAL RESEARCH, 280 (3). pp. 1082-1094.

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Abstract

This paper describes a framework that combines decision theory and stochastic optimisation techniques to address tide routing (i.e. optimisation of cargo loading and ship scheduling decisions in tidal ports and shallow seas). Unlike weather routing, tidal routing has been little investigated so far, especially from the perspective of risk analysis. Considering the journey of a bulk carrier between N ports, a shipping decision model is designed to compute cargo loading and scheduling decisions, given the time series of the sea level point forecasts in these ports. Two procedures based on particle swarm optimisation and Monte Carlo simulations are used to solve the shipping net benefit constrained optimisation problem. The outputs of probabilistic risk minimisation are compared with those of net benefit maximisation, the latter including the possibility of a ‘rule-of-the-thumb’ safety margin. Distributional robustness is discussed as well, with respect to the modelling of sea level residuals. Our technique is assessed on two realistic case studies in British ports. Results show that the decision taking into account the stochastic dimension of sea levels is not only robust in real port and weather conditions, but also closer to optimality than standard practices using a fixed safety margin. Furthermore, it is shown that the proposed technique remains more interesting when sea level variations are artificially increased beyond the extremes of the current residual models.

Item Type:	Article
Uncontrolled Keywords:	OR in maritime industry, Simulation, Scheduling, Robust optimisation, Particle swarm optimisation
Depositing User:	Symplectic Admin
Date Deposited:	20 Aug 2019 08:54
Last Modified:	19 Jan 2023 00:28
DOI:	10.1016/j.ejor.2019.08.002
Open Access URL:	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejor.2019.08.002
Related URLs:	Author Publisher
URI:	https://livrepository.liverpool.ac.uk/id/eprint/3052196

Available Versions of this Item

• Optimising cargo loading and ship scheduling in tidal areas. (deposited 02 Aug 2019 07:22)
  • Optimising cargo loading and ship scheduling in tidal areas. (deposited 16 Aug 2019 10:23)
    • Optimising cargo loading and ship scheduling in tidal areas. (deposited 20 Aug 2019 08:54) [Currently Displayed]