MATHEMATICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE SEA PORTS THROUGHPUT ASSESSMENT

Abstract

The sea transportation system, which in turn forms the basis of the global trade system, has been developing during the whole history of human civilization. The abrupt leaps in this steady development were caused both by the changes of technological paradigms (e. g. by the shift from sail to steam, appearance of steel framing and hull shells, containerization, digitalization etc.) and social reasons (abandon of the acceptable losses strategy after world wars, end of cold war, relaxation of the international tension and war conflicts etc.). Unfortunately, the social factors can not only push forward the development, but also have destructive character, manifesting themselves as crises of different scales and natures. The complexity and the scope of the global transportation system that has developed by the XXI century have already shown the tendency to kaleidoscopic changing of its states under small shocks. In full scale this sensitivity has developed after COVID-19 and Ukraine affairs. It seems unreal to expect not only quick revival of the collapsed world system of sea and land transportation, but even preservation of its structure. Consequently, the key elements of the transport infrastructure, i. e. sea port, found themselves in a very serious situation. Major ports have faced a problem of cargo flows deterioration and relevant redundancy of their capacity; minor ports have discovered the opposite problem, namely, the residual cargo flows squeezed on the periphery of business areal turned out to be too large for the existing facilities and resources. In both cases the changes in external commercial environment and relevant route patterns set for the ports a task of finding a new balance between potential cargo flows and existing resources. A decision of this problem by the methods of mixed integer linear programming is described in the paper.