Uncertain Programming Model for the Cross-Border Multimodal Container Transport System Based on Inland Ports

Abstract

The importance of inland ports in promoting current cross-border trade is increasingly recognized. In this work, we aim to design the entire network for the cross-border multimodal container transport system based on inland ports. Unlike previous studies, we consider strong uncertainty in cross-border transportation demand to be caused by a variety of realistic factors such as the global economic situation, trade policies among countries, and global epidemics, etc. To handle the demand uncertainty, we develop an uncertain programming model for the considered cross-border multimodal container transportation network design problem to minimize the expectation of the total costs, including carbon emissions, by imposing two types of chance constraints for capacity limitations. Under mild assumptions, we further convert the proposed uncertain model into its equivalent deterministic one, which can be solved by off-the-shelf solvers such as CPLEX, Gurobi, and Lingo. Finally, we illustrate the applicability of the proposed model by taking the Huaihai Economic Zone-Europe multimodal container transport system as a real-world case study. The computational results provide valuable suggestions and policy guidance regarding four issues: the inland port locations, the transportation route choices, the strategies for reducing the total cost, and the schemes for improving network performance against uncertain demand.

Keywords

• uncertainty theory
• inland port
• multimodal transport system
• uncertainty programming
• China-Europe Railway Express