A Time-Space Diagram for Solving Dynamic Berth Allocation Problem at Container Terminal

As one of the most essential parts of the container transportation and optimization, berth allocation problem is to assign a berthing position and a berthing time to every ship at a container terminal. In this paper, we consider a dynamic arrival of ships with discrete layout, that is, fixed arrival time are given for the ships, hence ships cannot berth before the expected arrival time and only one ship can be served at each single berth at a time. Aiming at minimizing the total service time (including handing time and waiting time) of all ships, where the handling time is decided by the ship's tonnage and handling efficiency, also, the actual physical condition of the berths and ships are carefully considered, an optimization model with time-space diagram is proposed, and a genetic algorithm is developed to solve it. Numerical experiment is conducted and shows that the genetic algorithm performs well and could be helpful in the efficient management of the container terminals.