Ship Selection and Inspection Scheduling in Inland Waterway Transport

Xizi Qiao, Ying Yang (), King-Wah Pang, Yong Jin and Shuaian Wang
Additional contact information
Xizi Qiao: Tsinghua-Berkeley Shenzhen Institute, Tsinghua University, Shenzhen 518055, China
Ying Yang: Faculty of Business, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong 999077, China
King-Wah Pang: Faculty of Business, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong 999077, China
Yong Jin: Faculty of Business, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong 999077, China
Shuaian Wang: Faculty of Business, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong 999077, China

Mathematics, 2024, vol. 12, issue 15, 1-23

Abstract: Inland waterway transport is considered a critical component of sustainable maritime transportation and is subject to strict legal regulations on fuel quality. However, crew members often prefer cheaper, inferior fuels for economic reasons, making government inspections crucial. To address this issue, we formulate the ship selection and inspection scheduling problem into an integer programming model under a multi-inspector and multi-location scenario, alongside a more compact symmetry-eliminated model. The two models are developed based on ship itinerary information and inspection resources, aiming to maximize the total weight of the inspected ships. Driven by the unique property of the problem, a customized heuristic algorithm is also designed to solve the problem. Numerical experiments are conducted using the ships sailing on the Yangtze River as a case study. The results show that, from the perspective of the computation time, the compact model is 102.07 times faster than the original model. Compared with the optimal objectives value, the gap of the solution provided by our heuristic algorithm is 0.37% on average. Meanwhile, our algorithm is 877.19 times faster than the original model, demonstrating the outstanding performance of the proposed algorithm in solving efficiency.

Keywords: inland waterway transport; inspection scheduling; ship selection; mathematical modeling (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/12/15/2327/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7390/12/15/2327/ (text/html)

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:gam:jmathe:v:12:y:2024:i:15:p:2327-:d:1442806

Access Statistics for this article

Mathematics is currently edited by Ms. Emma He

More articles in Mathematics from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().