Equitable Vessel Traffic Scheduling in a Seaport

Shuai Jia (), Qiang Meng () and Haibo Kuang ()
Additional contact information
Shuai Jia: Intelligent Transportation Thrust, Systems Hub, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Nansha, Guangzhou 511458, China
Qiang Meng: Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore 117576
Haibo Kuang: Collaborative Innovation Center for Transport Studies, and Transportation Management College, Dalian Maritime University, Dalian 116026, China

Transportation Science, 2022, vol. 56, issue 1, 162-181

Abstract: In the global maritime transportation network, the on-time performance of cargo transportation depends largely on the service capacity and accessibility of seaports. When opportunities for infrastructure expansions are not available, seaport congestion mitigation may require effective scheduling of the vessel traffic in the port waters. Although existing works on vessel traffic scheduling focus on minimizing vessel delays, this paper studies a novel vessel traffic scheduling problem that aims to address the inter-shipping line equity issue. We develop a lexicographic optimization model that accounts for two conflicting performance measures: efficiency, which favors minimizing total vessel delay; and equity, which favors balancing the impacts of delays fairly among shipping lines. Our model allows the port operator to quantify the efficiency-equity tradeoff and make the best vessel traffic scheduling decisions. For solving the model, we develop an effective two-stage solution method in which the first stage solves two single-objective models to obtain the maximum system efficiency and equity, whereas the second stage trades between efficiency and equity and seeks the best compromise between the two conflicting objectives. We apply our model and solution method on instances generated from the operational data of the Port of Shanghai. Our computational results show that an efficiency-oriented model can lead to highly inequitable traffic plans, whereas inter-shipping line equity can be achieved at only mild losses in efficiency, indicating that the consideration of inter-shipping line equity can lead to satisfactory service at both the vessel level and the shipping line level.

Keywords: port congestion mitigation; vessel traffic scheduling; inter-shipping line equity; lexicographic optimization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2021.1076 (application/pdf)

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:inm:ortrsc:v:56:y:2022:i:1:p:162-181

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Transportation Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().