Efficient algorithms for container terminal yard planning

In this book, we address a research question of how to design the optimal yard template to balance the workload of the yard blocks for a set of vessel services. As a technique of yard storage planning, a yard template normally specifies a static set of storage locations in a group of yard blocks for export containers of various vessel services. The research firstly analyses the yard template for vessel services with a cyclical calling pattern. A decomposition method is presented, and efficient algorithms are developed for approaching solutions to two sub-problems - Cluster Allocation Problem, the problem of determining the size of clusters in each export yard block, and Cluster Configuration Problem, the following problem of determining the location and the shape of each cluster. The analysis is extended to consider the yard planning problem for vessel services with irregular calling pattern. Under this condition, the Scattered Stacking Strategy is proposed to guide the storage of export containers.