Berth scheduling problem considering traffic limitations in the navigation channel

In view of the trend of upsizing ships, the physical limitations of natural waterways,huge expenses, and unsustainable environmental impact of channel widening, this paper aims toprovide a cost-efficient but applicable solution to improve the operational performance of containerterminals that are enduring inefficiency caused by channel traffic limitations. We propose a novelberth scheduling problem considering the traffic limitations in the navigation channel, which appearsin many cases including insufficient channel width, bad weather, poor visibility, channel accidents,maintenance dredging of the navigation channel, large vessels passing through the channel, andso on. To optimally utilize the berth and improve the service quality for customers, we proposea mixed-integer linear programming model to formulate the berth scheduling problem under theone-way ship traffic rule in the navigation channel. Furthermore, we develop a more generalizedmodel which can cope with hybrid traffic in the navigation channel including one-way traffic,two-way traffic, and temporary closure of the navigation channel. For large-scale problems, a hybridsimulated annealing algorithm, which employs a problem-specific heuristic, is presented to reducethe computational time. Computational experiments are performed to evaluate the effectiveness andpracticability of the proposed method