Discrete-Event Dynamic Systems Modelling Distributed Multi-Agent Control of Intermodal Container Terminals

Maritime intermodal container terminals (CTs) are complex hub systems in which multiple transport modes receive and distribute freight to various destinations. They can be considered as interchange places in a transport system network where seaways, railways, and motorways intersect. Freight is usually organized, transported, stacked, handled and delivered in standard units of a typical container, which is called TEU (Twenty Equivalent Unit), 20 feet long, 8 feet wide, and 8 feet high. TEUs easily fit to ships, trains and trucks that are built and work for this kind of cargo units. Usually, ships travelling on long routes (e.g. from Taiwan to a Mediterranean Sea port) are called vessel or ‘mother’ ships, and ships offering service on short distances in a local area (e.g. from Turkey to Mediterranean ports in other countries) are called feeder ships. Vessel and feeder ships differ in size and container capacity. A maritime CT is usually managed to offer three main services: a railway/road ‘export cycle’, when containers arrive to the terminal by trains/trucks and depart on vessel ships; a railway/road ‘import cycle’, when containers arrive on vessel ships and depart by trains/trucks; a ‘transshipment cycle’, when containers arrive on vessel (or feeder) ships and depart on feeder (or vessel) ships. These activities cause different concurrent and competition processes for the available resources. The aim is to achieve efficiency in flows of TEUs and in information distribution to guarantee fast operations and low costs. Many problems were investigated and many of them have connections and cannot be solved separately. The main focused problems are: berth allocation of arriving ships; loading and unloading of ships (crane assignment, stowage planning); transfer of containers from ships to storage area and viceversa (quayside operation); stacking operations (yardside operation); transfer to/from other transport modes (landside operation); workforce scheduling. In a word, managing a CT requires: • planning, monitoring and controlling all internal procedures for handling TEUs; • optimizing handling equipment, human operators, and information and communication technologies (control software and hardware, PDAs, wireless sensors O pe n A cc es s D at ab as e w w w .ite ch on lin e. co m