Coordinated optimized scheduling of locks and transshipment in inland waterway transportation using binary NSGA‐II

Abstract

Traffic congestion in inland waterways caused by insufficient throughput capacity of locks has become a compelling problem in developed inland shipping countries. In order to avoid excessive time wasted in waiting for lock service, it is suggested that some types of cargoes should be unloaded at the quays and transported by road/train to their destinations, which is called water–land transshipment. By this means, the ships are divided into two groups that either pass the lock or are transshipped at the quays, engendering the lock and water–land transshipment co‐scheduling (LWTC) problem. This paper focuses on the LWTC, where the roll‐on roll‐off ships, passenger ships, and general cargo ships that can be transshipped and other ships that can only pass the lock are considered in a lock‐quay co‐scheduling system. The LWTC problem is decomposed into an outer‐layer main 0‐1 optimization problem and two inner‐layer subproblems: lock scheduling and berth allocation. A multiobjective optimization model is proposed for the LWTC problem based on its two‐layer structure. To solve the LWTC problem, a hybrid heuristic method is proposed, where a modified binary nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II is proposed to solve the main problem, and the two subproblems are solved by specific heuristics. The proposed model and hybrid method are tested on instances extracted from historical data of traffic at Three Gorges Dam, the results of which demonstrate the feasibility of the model and the superiority of the proposed hybrid heuristic method over other comparisons.

A Comprehensive Review on NSGA-II for Multi-Objective Combinatorial Optimization Problems

“…The remaining problems, which are combinations of the above six MOCOPs, are considered under the category of miscellaneous problems. The problems included in this category are resource allocation supply chain scheduling and VRP [194], resource allocation and activity scheduling for fourth-party logistics [195], sustainable hub locationscheduling problem for perishable food supply chain [196], routing and scheduling of ships [197], location-routing problem [198], [199], [118], [200], [201], [202], integrated maintenance scheduling and VRP [203], travelling thief problem [204], lock scheduling and berth allocation [205], assignment-allocation [206], nursing home location-allocation problem [207], location-allocation problem [208], high-level synthesis problem [209], industrial hazardous waste locationrouting problem [210], and multi-objective RWA network design problem [211].…”

A Co-Scheduling Problem of Ship Lift and Ship Lock at the Three Gorges Dam

“…Constraints (19) ensure the draft requirement is satisfied at the lock chamber. Constraints (20)(21)(22)(23) determine the positions of the vessels in the same lockage.…”

“…Step 3: If a vessel can be placed on the left-hand side of the gap under constraints (17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23), it is moved up in the sequence to fill the gap, and step 2 is then repeated. Otherwise, continue with the next step.…”

“…Due the fact that the ship lift can only accommodate one vessel each time, its space utilization cannot be significantly improved. Thus, in the comparison, the objective function is simplified to the optimization of the chamber space utilization of the five-stage ship lock under constraints (15)(16)(17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22)(23)(24).…”

“…The model was solved by a binary Borg multi-objective evolutionary algorithm incorporating with an adaptive large neighborhood search and a multi-order best fit method. Recently, Ji, et al [23] investigated a bi-objective co-scheduling problem for the optimization of water-land transshipment decisions at the TGD, which was solved by a modified binary nondominated sorting genetic algorithm II (binary NSGA-II).…”