Container Terminal Planning Research Articles

The Importance of Environmental Factors in the Planning of Container Terminals: The Case Study of the Port of Augusta

Container terminals are the main hubs of the global supply chain but, conversely, they play an important role in energy consumption, environmental pollution and even climate change due to carbon emissions. Assessing the environmental impact of this type of port terminal and choosing appropriate mitigation measures is essential to pursue the goals related to a clean environment and ensuring a good quality of life of the inhabitants of port cities. In this paper the authors present a Terminal Decision Support Tool (TDST) for the development of a container terminal that considers both operation efficiency and environmental impacts. The TDST provides environmental impact mitigation measures based on different levels of evolution of the port’s container traffic. An application of the TDST is conducted on the Port of Augusta (Italy), a port that is planning infrastructural interventions in coming years in order to gain a new role as a reference point for container traffic in the Mediterranean.

Addressing a Coordinated Quay Crane Scheduling and Assignment Problem by Red Deer Algorithm

Nowadays, there is much attention for planning of container terminals in the global trade centers. The high cost of quay cranes motivates both scholars and industrial practitioners especially in the last decade to develop novel optimization models to address this dilemma. This study proposes a coordinated optimization model to cover both Quay Crane Scheduling Problem (QCSP) and Quay Crane Assignment Problem (QCAP) as among the first attempts in this area. Another main contribution of this paper is to apply a recent nature-inspired algorithm called Red Deer Algorithm (RDA). The RDA revealed its performance for a variety of combinatorial optimization problems in different real-world applications. This is the first attempt in the literature to employ this recent metaheuristic to solve the proposed Coordinated Quay Crane Scheduling and Assignment Problem (CQCSAP). Finally, an extensive comparison discussion is considered to reveal the main benefits of the proposed optimization model and solution algorithm.

COMPARATIVE STUDY OF BRAZILIAN PUBLIC CONTAINER TERMINALS: TECHNICAL EFFICIENCY RANKING AND FORECASTS FOR 2052

Purpose: Due to the competitiveness required in this port sector, analyzes the efficiency of the operations become relevant. Therefore, the main goal of this paper is to assess the technical efficiency of the operations in Brazilian public container terminals, considering the current and the projected demand (based on the nominal capacity) up to 2052.Design/methodology/approach: An efficiency ranking was established applying the Grey Relational Analysis method to all the Brazilian public containers. After that, the efficiency levels were forecasted for the year 2052, considering the historical data of terminals’ activity, the amount of used resources and their nominal capacities.Findings: The findings shows that the most efficiency terminals did not reach above 80% efficiency, even considering that they are the ones that best allocate their assets based on their demand. Furthermore, the improvement of technical efficiency of terminals does not depend only on the spare capacity; it must be a combination of resources, based on the increase in demand.Research limitations/implications: In this study, the limitations are related to the selection of a linear demand growth that implies in a high margin of error to be considered until 2052, compared to what will be accomplished. Besides, the container terminals were considered isolated from others on the same port but the equipment might be shared by different terminals.Practical implications: the paper might help port managers in the planning of container terminals’ for the next years, calling attention for the need of find balance between capacity and efficiency use of resources.Originality/value: the originality is related to the fact that we analyzed the composition of equipment (besides of the spare capacity) and the forecast of the technical efficiency helping in the planning of this sector. Besides, the application considered the Brazilian container terminals’.

Elaboração de jogos de empresa para auxiliar na gestão operacional e ambiental de terminais de contêineres: O caso do jogo Tecon-Ambiental

O objetivo deste trabalho é relatar o desenvolvimento de um jogo de empresas, com aplicação em cursos de gestão portuária, capaz de simular as principais operações de um terminal de contêineres e seus impactos ambientais. A revisão bibliográfica contempla a atividade portuária, seus impactos ambientais e a formação de gestores para atuarem na área de planejamento operacional de terminais de contêineres, por meio do emprego de jogos de empresas. O método utilizado foi o Estudo de Caso tendo o desenvolvimento do jogo de empresas TECON-AMBIENTAL como objeto de estudo. As técnicas utilizadas para coleta de dados foram revisão bibliográfica e análise documental. Os resultados mais relevantes indicam que o planejamento operacional de terminais de contêineres e os impactos ambientais desta atividade podem ser considerados de forma conjunta em um ambiente simulado – jogo de empresas – para formação de gestores que atuam na área portuária. Conclui-se, que as variáveis operacionais e ambientais utilizadas possuem verossimilhança com a realidade e que a simulação realizada por meio do uso do jogo de empresas TECON-AMBIENTAL possui elementos suficientes para que haja transferência de conhecimento, desenvolvimento de habilidades e incentivo a atitudes, proporcionando que o participante aplique o que aprendeu em outras situações.

Mathematical programming and simulation based layout planning of container terminals

Container terminal operators are under pressure to handle the increasing amount of container transfer in the global transportation network. To manage the growth, new container terminals are built or the capacity of existing ones is expanded using modern container handling technologies as well as automatic equipment. An efficient layout of the container terminal is crucial to obtain the maximum capacity. In this paper we present an approach based on a mixed integer linear model to find promising layout configurations for container terminals. Means of simulation are used to validate and evaluate the attained layout configuration. In addition the adequacy of the mixed integer linear model for planning layouts of container terminals is evaluated using the developed simulation model.

A COMPARISON OF ANALYTICAL METHODS AND SIMULATION FOR CONTAINER TERMINAL PLANNING

ABSTRACT Queuing models and simulation are two primary methods applied to container terminal planning. Queuing models tend to result in underestimated outcomes due to ships and berths not being classified by size and length. This paper classified both ships and berths using actual data and then compared the resultant differences of the scenarios with and without classification with the simulation. The comparison shows that the outcomes with and without the classification of ships and berths are located opposite to the outcomes obtained from the simulation, which was deliberately constructed and rendered sufficiently accurate results. The optimal scale of facilities of a container terminal is located between the outcomes of the two proposed scenarios. There is no longer a need to establish a complex and tedious simulation model. The method proposed in this paper provides a convenient way to determine the optimum number of berths and facilities for a container terminal.

Determining container terminal capacity on the basis of an adopted yard handling system

A comparison of container‐handling capacity on the basis of different handling systems, yard sizes and crane characteristics is presented. The layout of container terminals in the Taiwan ports is first examined based on discussions with experts from different consultant companies. A useful general equation is then derived and proposed to calculate the total number of 20‐foot container ground slots (TGS), or the area requirement per TGS, for different yard sizes with different handling systems based on different equipment dimensions. The area requirement per TGS is 32.1–35.1 m2/TEU, 35.4–43.3 m2/TEU and 32.9–41.2 m2/TEU, respectively, for straddle carriers system, rubber‐tyred gantry cranes system and rail‐mounted gantry cranes system. Factors like the dimensional characteristics of handling equipment, the container transhipment ratio and the average container dwell times in the container yard were incorporated into the above‐mentioned formula to compute the annual container‐handling capacities. Such analysis can be very useful for container terminal planning with regards to the selection of handling technology, site location or proposed service expansions.

Decision support system for container terminal planning

In this paper we describe a decision support system for capacity planning of container terminals. Typical elements of a container terminal are a quay, cranes,a stack yard and trucks for transport of containers between the quay and the stack yard and vice versa. For each of these elements we can devise models to describe the performance. The decision support system combined a heuristic analysis of these models to a global model to study the interaction between the elements of a container terminal.

Container Activities At Terminals

Containerisation is still spreading all over the world and the containerisation requirements in the ports had to be taken into account to meet national and international demands. Based on the present trends, it is expected that containerisation will be between 60% - 70% of all general cargo in the next decade. A container terminal layout is usually based on various requirements for container storage and transfer between ship and land feeder modes. When planning a new container terminal quite a number of decisive factors have to be considered which again will lead to the type of handling system requesting appropriate and special types of equipment. Further decision factors are the available area, the number of shipping lines to be served, access for operational reasons and the flow of information within the port. In addition to the above basic decisive factors, further factors are the need for handling of special containers, the market analysis and forecasting for containerisation. In this paper, the planning of container terminals will be discussed dealing with area requirements, and flow of activities. In addition to this, the situation of containerisation in Turkey will be discussed, comparing it with other countries' figures.