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Integrated scheduling of gantry cranes, container trucks and yard cranes in on-dock railway operation areas at multimodal container ports

Lookup NU author(s): Professor Jingxin DongORCiD

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This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0).


Abstract

© 2024 The Author(s). IET Intelligent Transport Systems published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of The Institution of Engineering and Technology. On-dock railway operation areas at sea-rail container ports play a crucial role in transferring containers between maritime and rail transportation systems. The operational efficiency of these areas depends on synchronizing rail and yard container handling equipment, including gantry cranes, container trucks, and yard cranes. However, time-sensitive container handling, seamless equipment coordination, and complex operational conflicts make multi-equipment scheduling a challenging decision-making problem. This study introduces an integrated scheduling method that both alleviates inter-equipment interferences and balances gantry cranes’ workloads. The underlying problem is formulated as a binary integer programming model using a novel space-time-state network. According to the specific model structure, a model reformulation method is proposed here to convert the original three-equipment scheduling model into a single-equipment scheduling version. Additionally, a Lagrangian relaxation-based heuristic is developed to efficiently solve the reformulated model. Numerical experiments are conducted to validate the effectiveness of the proposed solution approach under various instance settings and provide managerial insights into the problem. Computational results demonstrate that the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed solution approach. Furthermore, the results also indicate that enhanced operational efficiency in the operation area can only be achieved when the railway and storage side handling capacities are well-matched.


Publication metadata

Author(s): Xia T, Wang L, Zhang Q, Dong J-X, Song D-P, Zhu X

Publication type: Article

Publication status: Published

Journal: IET Intelligent Transport Systems

Year: 2025

Volume: 19

Issue: 1

Print publication date: 01/01/2025

Online publication date: 13/12/2024

Acceptance date: 11/11/2024

Date deposited: 11/11/2024

ISSN (print): 1751-956X

ISSN (electronic): 1751-9578

Publisher: John Wiley and Sons Inc.

URL: https://doi.org/10.1049/itr2.12600

DOI: 10.1049/itr2.12600

Data Access Statement: Data is available on request from the authors.


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Funding

Funder referenceFunder name
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. Grant Number: EP/Y024605/1
Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities. Grant Number: 2023JBZY006
Joint Funds of the National Natural Science Foundation of China. Grant Number: U2034208
National Natural Science Foundation of China. Grant Number: 52202394
Science and Technology Research and Development Plan Funds for China National Railway Group Co., Ltd.. Grant Number: K2023X040

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