A case-based stowage planning system

The computer support in stowage planning today is limited to the calculation of the state of the ship, e.g. concerning the ship's stability and strength or hazardous cargoes check. Stowage planners have to perform the core of the planning process manually. The growing size of container ships and the tight shipping schedule illustrate the increasing burden to the planners and its risk. A new method for semi-automating the process of stowage planning, called Casestow, is proposed. Casestow encompasses the difficulty of knowledge acquisition of stowage planning. It assists the planner in creating a stowage plan by remembering how a similar planning problem was solved.