Bicriteria Optimization Model for Locating Maritime Container Depots: Application to the Port of Valencia

Since the location of container depots has an impact on maritime logistics costs, the container depot location problem is usually treated as a cost minimization problem. But the location of the container depots also has a serious environmental impact, given the heavy traffic load inherent to these operations and the setting up and maintenance of the depots. In this paper a bicriteria optimization model for designing a network of depots in a hinterland is proposed and its application to the Port of Valencia, Spain is reported. The two objectives considered are (1) the total cost of the network and (2) the environmental impact of the container depots and the transport operations associated with them. An Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) has been used to determine the environmental impact of each depot, and the epsilon-constraint method to obtain the optimal Pareto set of the problem. The results clearly show that trade-offs are possible between both objective functions and that, for our case study, the proposed approach can obtain solutions that are more cost-effective and have lower environmental impacts than those currently existing.