Modeling of yard congestion and optimization of yard template in container ports

As a tactical-level plan, a yard template determines the assignment of spaces in a container port yard for arriving vessels. This paper investigates the concept of yard congestion quantitatively in the context of yard truck interruptions, and develops a combination of probabilistic and physics-based models for truck interruptions. The above work enables us to exactly evaluate the expected link travel time, which then acts as the basis for proposing a mixed-integer programming model that minimizes the total expected travel time of moving containers around the yard. A Squeaky Wheel Optimization based meta-heuristic is developed to solve the model. Experiments are also conducted to validate the effectiveness of the model and the solution method.