A Multi Agent Based Simulator for Managing a Container Terminal

Container terminals world wide are trying to expand capacity and increase performance at a minimum of investments. Often the container terminal operations are changing to meet increased customer demands as well as to adapt to new technologies. The increasing costs of container terminal development do justify the use of computer simulation to assist in planning and policy making. A flexible simulator which represents the marine-side operations of a container terminal with the yard operations is developed in order to test berth assignment management polices and yard stacking management policies. The simulator is designed using a Multi-Agents Systems approach. This type of simulator provides a modular and scalable method of modeling the entities in the container terminal domain. The developed simulator is called SIMPORT and is presented in the context of a case study of a major container terminal in India.