Generation of Container Flows for Container Terminals
In maritime logistics, simulation and mathematical optimization are commonly used methods for planning, solving problems and evaluating solutions. For testing new solutions under realistic conditions, an extensive amount of actual operational data are urgently needed. Since comprehensive real-life data are often unavailable or classified, the generation of synthetic data is a helpful way to get around this issue. One such instance is when we want to study of the dynamics at a container terminal, the nodes which connect the seaside with the hinterland, transshipping containers between vessels of different sizes, trains, and trucks. The container terminal functions as a buffer between the modes and offers to keep the containers in the yard for some hours or days. The vehicle arrivals and the containers to be unloaded and loaded from the vehicle constitute the container flows through a terminal.
With ConFlowGen, short for Container Flow Generator, an IT tool has been developed at the Institute of Maritime Logistics which is capable of generating such synthetic scenarios. It has been first presented at the LDIC conference 2022 and has been subject to continous development since then. The tool has been deployed in internal projects at the institute as well as in theses of students. The source code is hosted at https://github.com/1kastner/conflowgen and is open source. The project is supervised by Marvin Kastner.
In case the project has sparked your interest, we'd like to learn more about you and maybe even your use case!
| [182970] |
| Title: Synthetically generating traffic scenarios for simulation-based container terminal planning [preprint, to be part of the PIANC Yearbook 2023]. |
| Written by: Kastner, Marvin and Grasse, Ole |
| in: (2024). |
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| URL: https://pianc.app.box.com/s/vhe61hcxttpakyihjda76pk552itajmc |
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Note: conflowgen
Abstract: More than 80 percent of world trade is delivered via sea, making the maritime supply chain a very important backbone for the economy (UNCTAD 2020). Containerized trade regularly outperforms other types of transport in terms of growth, coinciding with consistent increases of average container vessel sizes (UNCTAD 2020). Container terminal operations are heavily affected by this development, since less but larger port calls create unwanted peaks and stress on the terminals and the hinterland. Not all container terminals are affected equally by the described situation. Economic cycles and events such as the global COVID-19 pandemic or the Russian war in Ukraine change the global supply chains, trade characteristics and transport demands between ports in the world. In 2004, Hartmann proposed an approach to create scenarios for simulation and optimization in the sense of container terminal planning and logistics. Due to the significant changes in maritime trade over the years, a new approach for generating synthetic container flow data became practical. In 2021, we introduced a rethought and reworked approach on this topic.The proposed tool, named ConFlowGen, aims to assist planners, scientists, and other maritime experts with providing comprehensive container flow scenarios based on minimal inputs and assumptions of the user. In this paper, we introduce ConFlowGen`s general principle of operation in an exemplary use case in the context of container terminal planning.