A Tabu Search Algorithm for Inter-terminal Container Transport

This paper discusses the container transport problem between terminals. The inter-terminal transport (ITT) becomes increasingly important with the expansion of port area and the intermodal transport. A major challenge to optimize the container transport is to find the adequate algorithm to handle the large-scale transport demand and planning horizon. A time-space graph is used to formulate the ITT in this paper, and then a tabu search algorithm is proposed. In order to test the algorithm, we apply it to a transport network with 18 terminals at the Maasvlakte in Port of Rotterdam. Different tabu search components are tested with different demand scenarios. A comparison of the results obtained by CPLEX and by the tabu search algorithm is also addressed. Through the comparison we can find that the algorithm can find good solution quickly, and performs well even for large scale transport demands where exact approaches are unable to find good solutions. (C) 2016, IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Hosting by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.