Dynamic approach to solve the daily drayage problem with travel time uncertainty

The intermodal transport chain can become more e cient by means of a good organization of drayage movements. Drayage in intermodal container terminals involves the pick up and delivery of containers at customer locations, and the main objective is normally the assignment of transportation tasks to the di erent vehicles, often with the presence of time windows. This scheduling has traditionally been done once a day and, under these conditions, any unexpected event could cause timetable delays. We propose to use the real-time knowledge about vehicle position to solve this problem, which permanently allows the planner to reassign tasks in case the problem conditions change. This exact knowledge of the position of the vehicles is possible using a geographic positioning system by satellite (GPS, Galileo, Glonass), and the results show that this additional data can be used to dynamically improve the solution

Strategies for dynamic appointment making by container terminals

We consider a container terminal that has to make appointments with barges dynamically, in real-time, and partly automatic. The challenge for the terminal is to make appointments with only limited knowledge about future arriving barges, and in the view of uncertainty and disturbances, such as uncertain arrival and handling times, as well as cancellations and no-shows. We illustrate this problem using an innovative implementation project which is currently running in the Port of Rotterdam. This project aims to align barge rotations and terminal quay schedules by means of a multi-agent system. In this\ud paper, we take the perspective of a single terminal that will participate in this planning system, and focus on the decision making capabilities of its intelligent agent. We focus on the question how the terminal operator can optimize, on an operational level, the utilization of its quay resources, while making reliable appointments with barges, i.e., with a guaranteed departure time. We explore two approaches: (i) an analytical approach based on the value of having certain intervals within the schedule and (ii) an approach based on sources of exibility that are naturally available to the terminal. We use simulation to get insight in the benefits of these approaches. We conclude that a major increase in utilization degree could be achieved only by deploying the sources of exibility, without harming the waiting time of barges too much

A Taxonomy for Management and Optimization of Multiple Resources in Edge Computing

Edge computing is promoted to meet increasing performance needs of data-driven services using computational and storage resources close to the end devices, at the edge of the current network. To achieve higher performance in this new paradigm one has to consider how to combine the efficiency of resource usage at all three layers of architecture: end devices, edge devices, and the cloud. While cloud capacity is elastically extendable, end devices and edge devices are to various degrees resource-constrained. Hence, an efficient resource management is essential to make edge computing a reality. In this work, we first present terminology and architectures to characterize current works within the field of edge computing. Then, we review a wide range of recent articles and categorize relevant aspects in terms of 4 perspectives: resource type, resource management objective, resource location, and resource use. This taxonomy and the ensuing analysis is used to identify some gaps in the existing research. Among several research gaps, we found that research is less prevalent on data, storage, and energy as a resource, and less extensive towards the estimation, discovery and sharing objectives. As for resource types, the most well-studied resources are computation and communication resources. Our analysis shows that resource management at the edge requires a deeper understanding of how methods applied at different levels and geared towards different resource types interact. Specifically, the impact of mobility and collaboration schemes requiring incentives are expected to be different in edge architectures compared to the classic cloud solutions. Finally, we find that fewer works are dedicated to the study of non-functional properties or to quantifying the footprint of resource management techniques, including edge-specific means of migrating data and services.Comment: Accepted in the Special Issue Mobile Edge Computing of the Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing journa

A satellite navigation system to improve the management of intermodal drayage

The intermodal transport chain can become more efficient by means of a good organization of the drayage movements. Drayage in intermodal container terminals involves the pick up or delivery of containers at customer locations, and the main objective is normally the assignment of transportation tasks to the different vehicles, often with the presence of time windows. The literature shows some works on centralised drayage management, but most of them consider the problem only from a static and deterministic perspective, whereas the work we present here incorporates the knowledge of the real-time position of the vehicles, which permanently enables the planner to reassign tasks in case the problem conditions change. This exact knowledge of position of the vehicles is possible thanks to a geographic positioning system by satellite (GPS, Galileo, Glonass), and the results show that this additional data can be used to dynamically improve the solution