Weather impact on containership routing in closed seas: A chance-constraint optimization approach

Kepaptsoglou, Konstantinos; Fountas, Grigorios; Karlaftis, Matthew G.

Abstract

Weather conditions have a strong effect on the operation of vessels and unavoidably influence total time at sea and associated transportation costs. The velocity and direction of the wind in particular may considerably affect travel speed of vessels and therefore the reliability of scheduled maritime services. This paper considers weather effects in containership routing; a stochastic model is developed for determining optimal routes for a homogeneous fleet performing pick-ups and deliveries of containers between a hub and several spoke ports, while incorporating travel time uncertainties attributed to the weather. The problem is originally formulated as a chance-constrained variant of the vehicle routing problem with simultaneous pick-ups and deliveries and time constraints and solved using a genetic algorithm. The model is implemented to a network of island ports of the Aegean Sea. Results on the application of algorithm reveal that a small fleet is sufficient enough to serve network’s islands, under the influence of minor delays. A sensitivity analysis based on alternative scenarios in the problem’s parameters, leads to encouraging conclusions with respect to the efficiency and robustness of the algorithm.

Citation

Kepaptsoglou, K., Fountas, G., & Karlaftis, M. G. (2015). Weather impact on containership routing in closed seas: A chance-constraint optimization approach. Transportation Research Part C : Emerging Technologies, 55, 139-155. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trc.2015.01.027

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Jan 28, 2015
• Online Publication Date: Mar 11, 2015
• Publication Date: 2015-06
• Deposit Date: Sep 18, 2018
• Journal: Transportation Research Part C: Emerging Technologies
• Print ISSN: 0968-090X
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 55
• Pages: 139-155
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trc.2015.01.027
• Keywords: Ship routing, Containerships, VRP, Stochastic travel times, Chance-constrained model, Pick-ups and deliveries, Time deadlines
• Public URL: http://researchrepository.napier.ac.uk/Output/1300784