Shortsea liner network design with transhipments at sea: a case study from Western Norway

Abstract

Short Sea Pioneer (SSP) is a novel concept for shortsea shipping. The concept is based on daughter ships acting as feeder vessels that meet with the mother ship at suitable locations at sea to tranship cargo. Such a system requires that the routes of both mother ship and daughter ships are synchronized. We provide a path flow formulation for the problem of determining the optimal set of routes for both ships. Non-dominated routes are generated a priori using a dynamic programming label-setting algorithm and used as input for the model. We use the model and solution approach to solve a real-world case from the Norwegian west coast. The results can be used to determine the optimal routes for mother and daughter ships as well as the optimal size of the daughter ships.