Ship Scheduling with Time-Varying Draft Restrictions: A Case Study in Optimisation with Time-Varying Costs
Elena Kelareva (ANU & NICTA)
ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE SEMINAR Final PhD SeminarDATE: 2013-09-25
TIME: 11:00:00 - 12:00:00
LOCATION: NICTA Boardroom
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ABSTRACT:
Many ports have restrictions on ship draft (distance between the waterline and the keel) which vary over time due to variation in environmental conditions. However, existing work in maritime transportation ignores time variation in draft restrictions, possibly missing opportunities to load more cargo at high tide.
Elena Kelareva's PhD thesis introduces time-varying restrictions on ship draft into several optimisation problems in the maritime industry, including the Bulk Port Cargo Throughput Optimisation Problem and the ship routing and scheduling problem with speed optimisation. The results for the BPCTOP show that our approach can increase annual revenue by $275 million dollars per year at Australia's largest port, and the results for the speed optimisation problem show that considering draft restrictions can reduce shipping costs by 7% compared to existing approaches.
This thesis also considers issues beyond time-varying draft restrictions in the maritime industry, and investigates approaches in the literature for solving optimisation problems with time-varying action costs. Several approaches are investigated for their potential to be generalisable between different applications, and faster, more efficient approaches are found for both the Bulk Port Cargo Throughput Optimisation problem, and another problem in maritime transportation -- the Liner Shipping Fleet Repositioning Problem.
