Agent-based Modeling and Simulation for Vehicle Dispatching at Container Terminals

The increasing large-scale container ship advances the more crucial requirement to container terminal scheduling system than ever. Whether vehicles dispatching at container terminals is rational or not is provided with important significance to improve the whole handling efficiency. The model framework of vehicle dynamic dispatching on the basis of multi-agent and Harvard architecture was proposed. Subsequently, the simulation of the above model on the AnyLogic was discussed in detail. The practical operational data stored in the database were engaged to drive the simulation; the blackboard system and message/conversation were fused to form the communication mechanism in the simulation; the resource allocation policies and algorithms in operation system were introduced to schedule vehicles. Finally, a running instance in port was simulated whose result excels the previous data to validate the feasibility and creditability of the methodology.