A MATHEMATICAL MODEL AND GENECTIC ALGORITHM SOLUTION METHODS FOR THE BERTH ALLOCATION PROBLEM WITH SEVERAL TYPES OF MACHINES

ABSTRACT Maritime shipping is vital to worldwide commerce. Due to the high flow in ports throughout the world, the efficient allocation of vessels in berths has become a problem. A new mathematical model and several algorithms are proposed in this paper to planning the allocation of the vessels in berths and the allocation of resources to the service of each vessel. Those resources, in general, are machines to load or unload vessels. The mathematical model was implemented on Cplex and can solve small scale instances, due to its high complexity. To solve larger instances, a genetic algorithm-based metaheuristic, a first-in first-out heuristic, and a machine allocation algorithm are also proposed in this paper. The model and the algorithms produce very useful and interesting results. Comparing, the results produced by the GA are, on average, 94% better than the results of the Cplex and 26% better than the results of FIFO.