Stochastic Empty Container Repositioning Problem with CO2 Emission Considerations for an Intermodal Transportation System

Abstract

As one of main challenge for carriers, empty container repositioning is subject to various uncertain factors in practice, which causes more operation costs. At the same time, the movements of empty containers can result in air pollution because of the CO2 emission, which has a negative impact on sustainable development. To incorporate environmental and stochastic characteristics of container shipping, in this paper, an empty container repositioning problem, taking into account CO2 emission, stochastic demand, and supply, is introduced in a sea–rail intermodal transportation system. This problem is formulated as a chance-constrained nonlinear integer programming model minimising the expected value of total weighted cost. A sample average approximation method is applied to convert this model into its deterministic equivalents, which is then solved by the proposed two-phase tabu search algorithm. A numerical example is studied to conclude that the stochastic demand and supply lead to more repositioning and CO2 emission-related cost. Total cost, inventory cost, and leasing cost increase with the variabilities of uncertain parameters. We also found that the total cost and other component costs are strongly dependent on the weights of repositioning cost and CO2 emission-related cost. Additionally, the sensitivity analysis is conducted on unit leasing cost.

Optimizing Multimodal Transportation Routes Considering Container Use

“…These studies involve the rational allocation and scheduling of empty containers without cargo loading in the process of cargo transportation. The main purpose of these studies is to balance the number of containers in various places and avoid the backlog of empty containers in one place and the shortage of empty containers in another place [42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50].…”

Carbon Mitigation Strategies of Port Selection and Multimodal Transport Operations—A Case Study of Northeast China

“…Multimodal transport network planning research is not new. For instance, studies have been conducted on hub-and-spoke multimodal transport networks considering stakeholders [26], an integrated Petri net (TPN) and data envelope analysis (DEA) model under multiple resources [27], an integrated long-haul routing model considering rest and railway planning capabilities [28], and the relocation of empty containers considering carbon emissions and stochastic demand [29]. However, the above-mentioned studies focused on model design or algorithm design by constructing multimodal transport models at operational and tactical levels.…”

The Impact of Lead Time Uncertainty on Supply Chain Performance Considering Carbon Cost

“…Research was conducted on how to reduce the negative impact on the environment during supply chain operations [8,9]. Quite a number of studies focus on transportation studies [10][11][12]. This paper mainly discusses the dynamic change of carbon emission cost in an uncertain supply chain environment with stochastic lead time, and explores the inventory management approach to buffer the fluctuation.…”

“…In this paper, Ip is defined as the inventory carbon cost per product. The inventory carbon cost IP t of the period t can be obtained using Equation (12). Equation 13represents the total inventory carbon cost ICC t , while Equation 14aggregates the total carbon cost CC t .…”