Optimal Hub Port Locations in China-Western Europe Container Liner Route

The hub-and-spoke network has been applied in the maritime transport since 1980s. To realize the economy of scale, transoceanic containerships optimize their liner routes to call only a limited number of hub ports. This paper develops a non-Symmetrical Proportional Model to calculate the origin-destination (O-D) container matrix of the port system. Then a Hub-and-Spoke Maritime Container Transport model is applied in the China-Western Europe liner route, which is under the rapid expansion of container shipping, to determine the hub ports that the liners stop and call. To solve real-sized instances, the heuristic algorithm is proposed and the solution is optimized by comparing the alternative results from the model computation. For the hub location, Hamburg, Rotterdam, Zeebrugge, Hong Kong, Kaohsiung and Shanghai are the optimal hubs in the China-Western European container liner's route. At last, further research direction is predicted to simulate under the real scenario.

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