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Exact and heuristic methods for placing ships in locks

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  • Verstichel, J.
  • De Causmaecker, P.
  • Spieksma, F.C.R.
  • Vanden Berghe, G.

Abstract

The ship placement problem constitutes a daily challenge for planners in tide river harbours. In essence, it entails positioning a set of ships into as few lock chambers as possible while satisfying a number of general and specific placement constraints. These constraints make the ship placement problem different from traditional 2D bin packing. A mathematical formulation for the problem is presented. In addition, a decomposition model is developed which allows for computing optimal solutions in a reasonable time. A multi-order best fit heuristic for the ship placement problem is introduced, and its performance is compared with that of the left-right-left-back heuristic. Experiments on simulated and real-life instances show that the multi-order best fit heuristic beats the other heuristics by a landslide, while maintaining comparable calculation times. Finally, the new heuristic’s optimality gap is small, while it clearly outperforms the exact approach with respect to calculation time.

Suggested Citation

  • Verstichel, J. & De Causmaecker, P. & Spieksma, F.C.R. & Vanden Berghe, G., 2014. "Exact and heuristic methods for placing ships in locks," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 235(2), pages 387-398.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:ejores:v:235:y:2014:i:2:p:387-398
    DOI: 10.1016/j.ejor.2013.06.045
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    Cited by:

    1. Ji, Bin & Yuan, Xiaohui & Yuan, Yanbin & Lei, Xiaohui & Fernando, Tyrone & Iu, Herbert H.C., 2019. "Exact and heuristic methods for optimizing lock-quay system in inland waterway," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 277(2), pages 740-755.
    2. Lijuan Yang & Eldon Y. Li & Yu Zhang, 2020. "Pricing and Subsidy Models for Transshipment Sustainability in the Three Gorges Dam Region of China," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 12(17), pages 1-20, August.
    3. Yuan, Yanbin & Ji, Bin & Yuan, Xiaohui & Huang, Yuehua, 2015. "Lockage scheduling of Three Gorges-Gezhouba dams by hybrid of chaotic particle swarm optimization and heuristic-adjusted strategies," Applied Mathematics and Computation, Elsevier, vol. 270(C), pages 74-89.
    4. Gharehgozli, Amir & Zaerpour, Nima, 2018. "Stacking outbound barge containers in an automated deep-sea terminal," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 267(3), pages 977-995.
    5. Passchyn, Ward & Coene, Sofie & Briskorn, Dirk & Hurink, Johann L. & Spieksma, Frits C.R. & Vanden Berghe, Greet, 2016. "The lockmaster’s problem," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 251(2), pages 432-441.
    6. Golak, Julian Arthur Pawel & Defryn, Christof & Grigoriev, Alexander, 2022. "Optimizing fuel consumption on inland waterway networks: Local search heuristic for lock scheduling," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    7. Passchyn, Ward & Briskorn, Dirk & Spieksma, Frits C.R., 2016. "Mathematical programming models for lock scheduling with an emission objective," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 248(3), pages 802-814.
    8. Ji, Bin & Zhang, Dezhi & Yu, Samson S. & Zhang, Binqiao, 2021. "Optimally solving the generalized serial-lock scheduling problem from a graph-theory-based multi-commodity network perspective," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 288(1), pages 47-62.
    9. Ji, Bin & Zhang, Dezhi & Zhang, Zheng & Yu, Samson S. & Van Woensel, Tom, 2022. "The generalized serial-lock scheduling problem on inland waterway: A novel decomposition-based solution framework and efficient heuristic approach," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 168(C).
    10. Caris, An & Limbourg, Sabine & Macharis, Cathy & van Lier, Tom & Cools, Mario, 2014. "Integration of inland waterway transport in the intermodal supply chain: a taxonomy of research challenges," Journal of Transport Geography, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 126-136.

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