Efficient models for the liner shipping hub location problem with spatial structure

Abstract

This paper investigates the hub location problem arising in liner shipping, which is called liner shipping hub location problem. In contrast to most other hub location problems, many such problems in liner shipping have a special spatial structure where ships mainly follow certain main waterways, e.g., via the Suez Canal between Asia and Europe. In this paper, we utilize this spatial structure to propose three efficient mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) models for the liner shipping hub location problem, where we also explore the effect of the opening of the Arctic sea route on hub location. We further investigate the analytical properties of our proposed models. Numerical experiments are carried out to account for the effectiveness of our proposed models. As compared with the conventional hub location model, our proposed models can be solved by commercial MILP solvers, such as CPLEX, more efficiently.