An integrated model for berth and yard planning in container terminals with multi-continuous berth layout

Abstract

Abstract Discontinuities and sharp curves commonly exist in the berth layout of container terminals. To cope with these layout characteristics, traditional studies proposed discrete or hybrid modeling approaches. However, the drawback of these approaches is the low berth spaceutilization.Inreality,berthspaceisaveryscarceresourceandthedevelopmentofwhich usually involves huge investments. Accordingly, a high space utilization approach is usually indispensable to a container terminal. In the literature, continuous berth layout modeling approach is sophisticated to be good in space utilization. However, its application is limited tocontinuouslayouts,butnotfordiscontinuities.Inotherwords,itisnotapplicabletomany container terminals in reality. To ?ll this gap, this paper studies an integrated berth allocation and yard planning problem with discontinuities berth layout. A novel multi-continuous berthlayoutapproachandamixedintegerlinearprogrammingareproposedtodealwiththis new problem. In addition, a Guided Neighborhood Search (GNS) is proposed to enhance the optimization ef?ciency. Experimental results show that the GNS signi?cantly reduce computational time enabling the proposed algorithm to be applied in reality. In addition, th