Sustainable maritime crude oil transportation: a split pickup and split delivery problem with time windows

This paper studies a novel sustainable vessel routing problem modeling considering the multi-compartment, split pickup and split delivery, and time windows concepts. In the presented problem, oil tankers transport crude oil from supply ports to demand ports around the globe. The objective is to find ship routes, as well as port arrival and departure times, in a way that minimizes transportation costs. As a second objective, we considered the sustainability aspect by minimizing the vessel energy efficiency operational indicator. Multiple products are transported by a heterogeneous fleet of tankers. Small realistic test instances are solved with the exact method

A distributed real-time power management scheme for shipboard zonal multi-microgrid system

The increasing demands of reducing fuel consumption for marine transportation have motivated the use of high fuel efficiency power plants and the development of power management systems (PMS). Current studies on shipboard PMS are mostly categorized as centralized, which are easy to be implemented and able to converge to the global optimum solutions. However, centralized techniques may suffer from the high computational burden and single-point failures. Considering the future trends of marine vessels toward zonal electrical distribution (ZED), distributed PMS are becoming an alternative choice. To achieve the ship high fuel-efficiency operation under high fluctuated propulsion loads, a real-time distributed PMS is developed in this paper that can acquire as good fuel economy as centralized PMS, but with faster computing speed. With a combination of filter-based, rule-based, and optimization-based approaches in a highly computationally efficient manner, the distributed PMS is constructed based on three layers that guarantees not only high fuel efficiency, but also sufficient energy reservation in different sailing modes and even in faulty conditions. Convergence tests and multiple case studies are conducted to prove the effectiveness of the proposed PMS in terms of fast convergence speed, improved fuel efficiency, and enhanced resilience.Peer ReviewedPostprint (published version

The synergistic effect of operational research and big data analytics in greening container terminal operations: a review and future directions

Container Terminals (CTs) are continuously presented with highly interrelated, complex, and uncertain planning tasks. The ever-increasing intensity of operations at CTs in recent years has also resulted in increasing environmental concerns, and they are experiencing an unprecedented pressure to lower their emissions. Operational Research (OR), as a key player in the optimisation of the complex decision problems that arise from the quay and land side operations at CTs, has been therefore presented with new challenges and opportunities to incorporate environmental considerations into decision making and better utilise the ‘big data’ that is continuously generated from the never-stopping operations at CTs. The state-of-the-art literature on OR's incorporation of environmental considerations and its interplay with Big Data Analytics (BDA) is, however, still very much underdeveloped, fragmented, and divergent, and a guiding framework is completely missing. This paper presents a review of the most relevant developments in the field and sheds light on promising research opportunities for the better exploitation of the synergistic effect of the two disciplines in addressing CT operational problems, while incorporating uncertainty and environmental concerns efficiently. The paper finds that while OR has thus far contributed to improving the environmental performance of CTs (rather implicitly), this can be much further stepped up with more explicit incorporation of environmental considerations and better exploitation of BDA predictive modelling capabilities. New interdisciplinary research at the intersection of conventional CT optimisation problems, energy management and sizing, and net-zero technology and energy vectors adoption is also presented as a prominent line of future research

The Pheromone-Based Harmony Search Algorithm for the Asymmetric Traveling Salesman Problem

This paper presents a modification of the Harmony Search algorithm (HS) adjusted to an effective solving of instances of the Asymmetric Traveling Salesman Problem. The improvement of the technique spans the application of a pheromone, which, by serving the role of long-term memory, enables the improvement of the quality of determined results, especially for tasks characterized by a significant number of vertices. The publication includes the results of tests that suggest the achievement of effectiveness improvement through the modification of the HS and recommendations concerning the proper configuration of the algorithm

The synergistic effect of operational research and big data analytics in greening container terminal operations: A review and future directions

Container Terminals (CTs) are continuously presented with highly interrelated, complex, and uncertain planning tasks. The ever-increasing intensity of operations at CTs in recent years has also resulted in increasing environmental concerns, and they are experiencing an unprecedented pressure to lower their emissions. Operational Research (OR), as a key player in the optimisation of the complex decision problems that arise from the quay and land side operations at CTs, has been therefore presented with new challenges and opportunities to incorporate environmental considerations into decision making and better utilise the ‘big data’ that is continuously generated from the never-stopping operations at CTs. The state-of-the-art literature on OR's incorporation of environmental considerations and its interplay with Big Data Analytics (BDA) is, however, still very much underdeveloped, fragmented, and divergent, and a guiding framework is completely missing. This paper presents a review of the most relevant developments in the field and sheds light on promising research opportunities for the better exploitation of the synergistic effect of the two disciplines in addressing CT operational problems, while incorporating uncertainty and environmental concerns efficiently. The paper finds that while OR has thus far contributed to improving the environmental performance of CTs (rather implicitly), this can be much further stepped up with more explicit incorporation of environmental considerations and better exploitation of BDA predictive modelling capabilities. New interdisciplinary research at the intersection of conventional CT optimisation problems, energy management and sizing, and net-zero technology and energy vectors adoption is also presented as a prominent line of future research

Design of Closed Loop Supply Chains

Increased concern for the environment has lead to new techniques to design products and supply chains that are both economically and ecologically feasible. This paper deals with the product - and corresponding supply chain design for a refrigerator. Literature study shows that there are many models to support product design and logistics separately, but not in an integrated way. In our research we develop quantitative modelling to support an optimal design structure of a product, i.e. modularity, repairability, recyclability, as well as the optimal locations and goods flows allocation in the logistics system. Environmental impacts are measured by energy and waste. Economic costs are modelled as linear functions of volumes with a fixed set-up component for facilities. We apply this model using real life R&D data of a Japanese consumer electronics company. The model is run for different scenarios using different parameter settings such as centralised versus decentralised logistics, alternative product designs, varying return quality and quantity, and potential environmental legislation based on producer responsibility.supply chain management;reverse logistics;facility location;network design;product design