Hub-and-spoke network design for container shipping considering disruption and congestion in the post COVID-19 era

Global maritime supply chain (MSC) faces increasing risks of uncertainty in the post COVID-19 era, ports disruptions and congestion are becoming common. To ensure high reliability of container shipping network, this paper study on the issue of locating hub ports and allocating non-hub ports (spokes) to hubs, meanwhile backup hub ports. An extended container shipping hub-and-spoke network design problem (HSN) is investigated, considering the failure and congestion of hubs, a 0-1 nonlinear programming model is developed for minimizing the transportation cost. Furthermore, we simulate container shipping network using Asia-Europe trade data, and propose the approach of particle swarm optimization (PSO) to solve the model. The experimental results show that path replacement cost and congestion cost affect the network design to a great extent, and backup hub ports could improve the reliability of global container shipping networks for capacity scheduling and allocation. This study can provide certain useful managerial insights for the liner company's daily operation, and design flexible container shipping HSN to ensure maximum efficiency after the COVID-19 irruption.