Models and Tabu Search Heuristics for the Berth-Allocation Problem

  • Authors:

  • Jean-François Cordeau;Gilbert Laporte;Pasquale Legato;Luigi Moccia

  • Affiliations:

  • HEC Montréal, 3000 Chemin de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine, Montréal, Canada H3T 2A7;HEC Montréal, 3000 Chemin de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine, Montréal, Canada H3T 2A7;Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informatica e Sistemistica, Universitià della Calabria, 87036 Rende (CS), Italy;HEC Montréal, 3000 Chemin de la Côte-Sainte-Catherine, Montréal, Canada H3T 2A7, and Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informatica e Sistemistica, Universitià della Calabria, 87036 ...

  • Venue:
  • Transportation Science
  • Year:
  • 2005

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Abstract

In the berth-allocation problem (BAP) the aim is to optimally schedule and assign ships to berthing areas along a quay. The objective is the minimization of the total (weighted) service time for all ships, defined as the time elapsed between the arrival in the harbor and the completion of handling. Two versions of the BAP are considered: the discrete case and the continuous case. The discrete case works with a finite set of berthing points. In the continuous case ships can berth anywhere along the quay. Two formulations and a tabu search heuristic are presented for the discrete case. Only small instances can be solved optimally. For these sizes the heuristic always yields an optimal solution. For larger sizes it is always better than a truncated branch-and-bound applied to an exact formulation. A heuristic is also developed for the continuous case. Computational comparisons are performed with the first heuristic and with a simple constructive procedure.