METAHEURISTIC ANALYSIS APPLIED TO THE BERTH ALLOCATION PROBLEM: CASE STUDY IN A PORT CONTAINER TERMINAL

ABSTRACT The simulated annealing (SA) and genetic algorithm (GA) metaheuristics are comparatively applied to the berth allocation problem (BAP) of a port container terminal. By synthesizing the experimental studies of the BAP available in the literature, the two methods are compared when applied to the same case. For this purpose, six test problems are considered, where SA and GA are compared using four crossover operators. Once the optimal GA crossover operator is determined, computational tests are performed with the data obtained at the port terminal to compare the performance of the two metaheuristics.