Sustainable ship scheduling optimization for better berth allocation at the port of Annaba-Algeria

Abstract

Maritime transportation plays a crucial role in global trade, as evidenced by the vast amount of containerized cargo transported between ports. In the realm of containerized maritime transport, an increasingly critical challenge lies in the efficient assignment of berths. Effectively organizing operations at small ports is a fundamental element in establishing a more streamlined and dependable overall maritime supply chain, ultimately benefiting larger ports. In this paper, we address the berth allocation problem at small ports and use a mathematical model; aiming to minimize the service time of all ships at the port and thereby reducing fuel consumption and emissions. To achieve this, we employed two meta-heuristics; genetic algorithm and tabu search. Results were further optimized using a criterion for the best scheduling of ships, demonstrating their significance through comparison with the FCFS method applied at the port of Annaba in Algeria.

Keywords

• Maritime transport
• ship
• berth allocation problem
• optimization
• genetic algorithm
• tabu search