Concept of compatibility in shipping: fuzzy set theory and case-based reasoning approaches

my children, my wife and my parents i Summary This thesis aims at contributing a new perspective on the way living problems in shipping practice are addressed. Shipping is the workhorse of the world economy. It connects nearly all parts of the world. State of the macro economy, weather and political events affect the sector very much. The magnitude of their influence is unclear and is difficult to justify objectively. Those aspects are taken into account when determining of freight rates or charter hire. Therefore shipping can be viewed as a complex system. The existing tools including market forecasts and shipping indexes are less useful for conducting daily shipping practice. Information is available in abundance, but the useful one is still scarce and expensive. In spite of the complexity of the living problems in shipping, an experienced shipping practitioner can solve problems quickly and-frequently-satisfactorily. An experienced ship broker, for example, can assess the value of ships better and faster than any value assessment method. This merit leads to the idea, that it would be useful to have a better insight on this phenomenon that experience and intuition play an important role in practice and that similar problems tend to have similar solutions. Therefore the capability to recognize similar problems will be helpful to find the desired solution. Compatibility, a concept proposed as an attempt to explain and to embrace the way problems-solvings (value assessment and planning tasks) are conducted in daily shipping practice. The concept of compatibility involves an act of grouping of similar attributes of similar objects, for example in the case of a ship replacement. The concept concerns also an act of matching between objects of different roles or functionalities, for example between a ship and route, or between a ship and a charter hire value. It implies that the concept of compatibility means an act of problem-solving. Fuzzy set theory and case-based reasoning are used, given the capability for addressing the notions of vagueness and learning respectively, which mark the concept of compatibility. Three models have been developed : (a) fuzzy arithmetic-based voyage estimation (b) tailor-made shipping index and (c) case-based stowage planning. The implementation of the concept delivers a new and promising way of addressing the problems which are not addressed satisfactorily at present. Preface and Acknowledgement Human experts are not systems of rules, they are libraries of experiences Riesbeck and Schank 1 This dissertation can …