A Heuristic Approach for Solution of the Berth Allocation Problem in Bulk Ports

Abstract

The international trade of raw materials in bulk is deeply dependent on maritime transport and that is why ports have been induced to invest in infrastructure and logistics to improve the supply of ships. In this context, the present work addresses the Berth Allocation Problem (BAP): where the objective is to allocate ships to berths in order to minimize operating costs. The PAB can be considered as one of the main optimization problems in maritime terminals, due to the growing demand of ships that transport products in bulk. Thus, an algorithm that combines the LNS heuristic method and simple permutation will be proposed. The results of the computational tests show that the PAB-HE heuristic was able to produce a relative GAP lower than 10.66% in relation to the lower limit obtained by the CPLEX® solver for instances with speed of the cradles with a penalty of 25% and 17.18% GAP for instances with cradle speed with a 50% penalty, in a computational time of less than 20 seconds.