Optimization of Berth Allocation for Sea-Rail Intermodal Container Terminal

Seaports are where the container transshipment is completed with efforts from both port and railway. The time or volume cohesion problem can happen between seaport and railway and causes containers to stay longer in port, while extra time and costs are increased. This paper introduced the collaborative problem of key resources at the seaports. The objective of the study is to minimize the total dwelling time and berth deviations of all vessels. A multi-objective integer programming model is proposed for the integrated scheduling of berth allocation under the time constraint of both trains and vessels. The model considers capacity restrictions, vessel priorities, and desired berth positions. To solve the multi-objective model, the combination of ideal point method and adaptive genetic algorithm is proposed. The main idea of this algorithm is to transform the multi-objective model into a single-objective model by the ideal point method and then solve it by adaptive genetic algorithm.