Agent-Based Model and Simulations of the Management of Ports: The Import Processes at the Port of Genoa

Ports have an integral role of our economy, they are strategic places of exchange, and especially over the last few decades and with the phenomenon of globalization, the ports are a reality in continuous movement and growth. Therefore, they are operating places of extreme complexity, especially in their logistics functions of transport management. The paper deals with the modelling and implementation of the import process of goods in a port in order to make more organized, fast and efficient complex logistics network, through ad-hoc development policies. To this purpose, we develop an agent-based model (ABM) of a port, populated by the real main actors (stakeholders) involved in the port activities. The model simulates the actual port processes, i.e., the sending of goods, the acceptation or not of imported goods, the planning of transports etc. With this framework, the business process is implemented for developing a computer supported management tool to handle the port activities flow. The tool is designed for the integration in a virtual infrastructure that allows an advanced operational management of port traffics. By modelling the time documentation according to the specification of the Genoa case, the business case of the port of Genoa is tested. Results show that the mechanism implemented simulates the actual process. Moreover some bottleneck are discovered, such as delays to the handling of the containers and queues formation due to missing documentation or documentation with errors or not ready.