Determining optimal inland-empty-container depot locations under stochastic demand

Neha Mittal, Maria Boile, Alok Baveja and Sotiris Theofanis

Research in Transportation Economics, 2013, vol. 42, issue 1, 50-60

Abstract: Maritime freight volumes fluctuate with changes in consumer demand and global economies. In this paper we analyze the stochasticity in the container trade volumes and perform a two-stage stochastic analysis with recourse to determine an optimal set of inland depots to be opened within a 10-year time horizon. The work builds on our previous effort that introduced the concept of an ‘Inland-Depots-for-Empty-Containers’ (IDEC) system for effective regional repositioning of empty containers. We evaluate the proposed approach by performing a case study based on the port region of New York/New Jersey. Results obtained demonstrate greater expected benefit from the proposed approach as compared to the corresponding deterministic or single-stage stochastic models.

Keywords: Empty equipment fleet management; Empty container repositioning; ‘Inland-Depots-for-Empty-Containers’ (IDEC) system; Facility location problem; Two-stage stochastic analysis with recourse; Scenario planning; Demand uncertainty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: R41 R42 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0739885912001680
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:retrec:v:42:y:2013:i:1:p:50-60

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.elsevier.com/wps/find/supportfaq.cws_home/regional
https://shop.elsevie ... _01_ooc_2&version=01

DOI: 10.1016/j.retrec.2012.11.007

Access Statistics for this article

Research in Transportation Economics is currently edited by M. Dresner

More articles in Research in Transportation Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().