DYNAMIC OPTIMIZATION OF PORT OPERATIONS ONBOARD A TYPICAL RORO VESSEL, AIDED BY A SMART DECISION SUPPORT SYSTEM

Abstract

The principal reason behind the genesis of Roll On – Roll Off vessel design was to increase the pace of loading/unloading operations by eliminating the requirement of cargo-handling equipment thus enabling the wheeled cargo to be driven to its stowage location. The practice being followed today leads to a higher dependency of port operations, associated to any vessel, on ballast water to counter the trim/list generated due to unplanned and imbalanced stowage of cargo. Though advancements in field of ship automation have led to a development of ballast water management system, still, optimization of port operations, namely loading/unloading, is missing due to operator’s consideration of usage of ballast as the only natural resort. The earlier research focus at speeding up the ballasting process, whereas the need of the hour is to counter the generation of ballast, because time is a pre-requisite of all ballast operation which cannot be overlooked. The study involves the generation of an Eco-Friendly Decision Support System which counters the moment of similar cargo against each other in a three dimensionally modeled ship simulation, thus, reducing requirement of ballast. The result of the study indicates that vessel’s intact statical stability could be maintained without performing ballasting operations, thus enabling cargo stowage at port to save time, as well as the surrounding marine ecosystem. The flexible design of Decision Support System makes its application possible for various other vessel-types, while at the same time opening a plethora of opportunities to inculcate Artificial intelligence, Big-Data analysis and whereas other advancements, thus, shortening the gap between automation and optimization.