Promoting Collaborative Relations at Intermodal Hubs Using an Iterative MPC Approach

Abstract

Intermodal hubs are part of transportation networks in a world scale. All partners in a transportation network should contribute to move cargo from a source to a final destination at the agreed time. With the increase of globalization, source and final destinations are becoming far distant from each other. This geographical separation leads to an increase of transportation cargo demand despite the current economic crisis. The increase in freight commerce creates a challenge to transportation networks: the same infrastructure (intermodal hubs and transport providers) has to be able to move a higher amount of cargo without compromising the client satisfaction. In this paper it is shown that collaborative relations can be promoted at intermodal hubs using an iterative approach. Cargo is categorized in terms of type, final destination and due time to be delivered. Using a mathematical model to update the existent cargo per destination and due time at a terminal it is possible to make predictions about the future. These predictions can be used on the Model Predictive Control (MPC) problem formulated for cargo assignment at each terminal within an intermodal hub. Collaborative relations among terminals are implemented through information exchange from the solution of the MPC problem of each terminal, without compromising private information. A central coordinator collects the information from all terminals and updates the transport capacity allocated for each terminal. The iterative procedure is based in terms of achieving a better solution from both a hub, transport operator and client perspective. The iterative approach is illustrated with numerical experiments considering an intermodal hub composed of three container terminals.