Barge Prioritization, Assignment, and Scheduling During Inland Waterway Disruption Responses

Inland waterways face natural and man-made disruptions that may affect navigation and infrastructure operations leading to barge traffic disruptions and economic losses. This dissertation investigates inland waterway disruption responses to intelligently redirect disrupted barges to inland terminals and prioritize offloading while minimizing total cargo value loss. This problem is known in the literature as the cargo prioritization and terminal allocation problem (CPTAP). A previous study formulated the CPTAP as a non-linear integer programming (NLIP) model solved with a genetic algorithm (GA) approach. This dissertation contributes three new and improved approaches to solve the CPTAP. The first approach is a decomposition based sequential heuristic (DBSH) that reduces the time to obtain a response solution by decomposing the CPTAP into separate cargo prioritization, assignment, and scheduling subproblems. The DBSH integrates the Analytic Hierarchy Process and linear programming to prioritize cargo and allocate barges to terminals. Our findings show that compared to the GA approach, the DBSH is more suited to solve large sized decision problems resulting in similar or reduced cargo value loss and drastically improved computational time. The second approach formulates CPTAP as a mixed integer linear programming (MILP) model improved through the addition of valid inequalities (MILP\u27). Due to the complexity of the NLIP, the GA results were validated only for small size instances. This dissertation fills this gap by using the lower bounds of the MILP\u27 model to validate the quality of all prior GA solutions. In addition, a comparison of the MILP\u27 and GA solutions for several real world scenarios show that the MILP\u27 formulation outperforms the NLIP model solved with the GA approach by reducing the total cargo value loss objective. The third approach reformulates the MILP model via Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition and develops an exact method based on branch-and-price technique to solve the model. Previous approaches obtained optimal solutions for instances of the CPTAP that consist of up to five terminals and nine barges. The main contribution of this new approach is the ability to obtain optimal solutions of larger CPTAP instances involving up to ten terminals and thirty barges in reasonable computational time

The development of river-based intermodal transport: the case of Ukraine

It should be noted that the (inland waterway transport) IWT in Ukraine currently is in its infancy in comparison with other land based transport means (rail and road) and with other countries that possess navigable rivers. This paper is an extension of the research initiated by Grushevska and Notteboom (2015) where the concepts of intermediacy and centrality were introduced in order to assess the role of Ukraine in the global and regional transport networks. The list of key obstacles for Ukraine’s intermediacy function included IWT related barriers such as: (i) deficient inland waterway infrastructure, (ii) high IWT costs (fees for bridges, locks etc.) and (iii) pilotage charges. To date the transportation to/from ports is mainly fulfilled by road or by rail based multimodal transport solutions. We present the unutilized potential of Ukrainian IWT that needs to be efficiently exploited for the benefit of the national economy and national transport system. This study intends to enrich the limited academic research on IWT systems in a transition stage, as exemplified by the case of Ukraine

Green intermodal freight transportation: bi-objective modeling and analysis

Efficient planning of freight transportation requires a comprehensive look at wide range of factors in the operation and management of any transportation mode to achieve safe, fast, and environmentally suitable movement of goods. In this regard, a combination of transportation modes offers flexible and environmentally friendly alternatives to transport high volumes of goods over long distances. In order to reflect the advantages of each transportation mode, it is the challenge to develop models and algorithms in Transport Management System software packages. This paper discusses the principles of green logistics required in designing such models and algorithms which truly represent multiple modes and their characteristics. Thus, this research provides a unique practical contribution to green logistics literature by advancing our understanding of the multi-objective planning in intermodal freight transportation. Analysis based on a case study from hinterland intermodal transportation in Europe is therefore intended to make contributions to the literature about the potential benefits from combining economic and environmental criteria in transportation planning. An insight derived from the experiments conducted shows that there is no need to greatly compromise on transportation costs in order to achieve a significant reduction in carbon-related emissions

Management of Coastal Navigation Channels Based on Vessel Underkeel Clearance in Transit

The United States Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) spends approximately $2 billion annually to investigate, construct, and maintain projects in its portfolio of coastal navigation infrastructure. Of that expenditure, approximately$1 billion is spent annually on maintenance dredging to increase the depth of maintained channels. The USACE prioritizes maintenance funding using a variety of metrics reflecting the amount of cargo moving through maintained projects but does not directly consider the reduction in the likelihood for the bottom of a vessel\u27s hull to make contact with the bottom of the channel that results from maintenance dredging investments. Net underkeel clearance, which remains between the channel bottom and the vessel’s keel after considering several important factors that act to increase the necessary keel depth, is used as an indicator of potential reduction of navigation safety. This dissertation presents a model formulated to estimate net underkeel clearance using archival Automatic Identification System (AIS) data and applies it to the federal navigation project in Charleston, South Carolina. Observations from 2011 including 3,961 vessel transits are used to determine the probability that a vessel will have less than 0 feet of net underkeel clearance as it transits from origin to destination. The probability that a vessel had net underkeel clearance greater than or equal to 0 feet was 0.993. A Monte-Carlo approach is employed to prioritize reach maintenance improvement order. A value heuristic is used to rank 7,500 dredging alternatives. 159 options were identified that meet an arbitrarily selected minimum reliability of 0.985. Cost reductions associated with options that met the minimum reliability requirement ranged from 7.7% to 42.6% on an annualized basis. Fort Sumter Range, Hog Island Reach, and Wando Lower Reach are identified as the most important reaches to maintain. The underkeel clearance reliability model developed in this work provides a more accurate representation of the waterway users’ ability to safely transit dredged channels with respect to available depth that is currently available to USACE waterway managers. The transit reliability metric developed provides an accurate representation of the benefit obtained from channel dredging investments, and directly relates the benefit to dredging cost