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Maritime and Inland Waterways Transportation
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Maritime and Inland Waterways Transportation

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Transportation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (10 April 2024) | Viewed by 5312

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Bin Ji

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Traffic & Transportation Engineering, Central South University, Changsha 410075, China
Interests: serial-lock scheduling problem; berth allocation; vehicle routing problem; job shop scheduling; multi-objective optimization; machine learning
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Shuanglin Li

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Traffic & Transportation Engineering, Central South University, Changsha 410075, China
Interests: emergency management; logistics system optimization; production operation management
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Samson Yu

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Engineering, Deakin University, Geelong, VIC 3216, Australia
Interests: nonlinear systems; optimization; control theories and applications; sustainable transportation and electricity
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

In recent years, maritime and inland waterways transportation has gained significant popularity due to its reliability, cost effectiveness, low emissions, and substantial contribution to sustainable mobility. In view of the great complexity of the water system structure and abundant channel characteristics of the basin, and the spatial and temporal distribution characteristics of shipping demand, it is worth conducting container shipping service network design, which can improve the shipping efficiency and the overall service level of the infrastructure.

With the deep internationalization of container transportation and continuous growth of port trade, ports are busier than ever, and the competition has become increasingly fierce. Berths and quay cranes are essential resources in container terminals, and making appropriate scheduling plans for berth and quay operation is imperative to enhance the effectiveness of container terminals. In addition, due to the growing maritime and inland traffic, the locks suffer from increasing stress when transferring vessels; some even become the bottleneck of navigation. Examples of this include the locks at Three Gorges Dam (TGD) and the Upper Mississippi River (UMR), where costly delay of vessels occurs frequently.

The sailing speed of vessels significantly affects the total operating cost. The bunker consumption of a vessel is very sensitive to its sailing speed, and the bunker cost accounts for a large proportion of the total operating cost. The sailing speed also affects the sailing time, which must be accounted for during route planning.

The countermeasures in current research can be categorized into three aspects: 1) Designing a shipping service network. Based on the transportation tasks between O-D ports during the planning period, the number of routes in the network and the ports and the sequence of calls are determined. In addition, the type and number of vessels for each route are optimized, minimizing the operating costs of shipping companies. 2) Reducing the total handling time and improving facility utilization, such as berth, quay crane, and container yard. These strategies collaborate through asset sharing and co-scheduling. Enhancing the efficiency of lock operations and reducing the tardiness of vessels is crucial, especially when the ports and inland waterways wish to maintain or raise their market share. 3) Designing efficient algorithms to take the sailing speed optimization problem (SSP) into consideration while planning the vessel routing. Vessel routing has a variety of features, including overnight trips, disjointed time windows, not necessarily prespecified routes, and uncertain weather conditions.

This Special Issue aims to solicit high-quality, state-of-the-art research involving theoretical or technical innovation in the optimization of waterways transportation. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

  • Maritime and inland waterways, shipping network optimization.
  • Berth allocation, quay crane assignment, serial-lock scheduling problem, co-scheduling.
  • Sailing speed optimization, ship routing.

Prof. Dr. Bin Ji
Dr. Shuanglin Li
Dr. Samson Yu
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • maritime and inland waterways transportation
  • berth allocation and quay crane assignment
  • serial-lock scheduling problem
  • sailing speed optimization

Published Papers (3 papers)

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Research

21 pages, 3609 KiB  
Article
Status of the Marinas’ Development in the Southern Region of the Romanian Sea Coast: Implications for Sustainable Recreational Transport in the Black Sea
by Dragos Filimon
Sustainability 2023, 15(10), 7979; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15107979 - 13 May 2023
Viewed by 1096
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to highlight the state of development of tourist ports in the Romanian Black Sea coastal area and their implications for the sustainable provision of quality recreational transport. As indicated by the collected data, both locals and tourists [...] Read more.
The aim of this paper is to highlight the state of development of tourist ports in the Romanian Black Sea coastal area and their implications for the sustainable provision of quality recreational transport. As indicated by the collected data, both locals and tourists are showing a growing interest in nautical sports and maritime recreational activities, and there are plans to upgrade existing marinas and build new ones. Although the boating activity in the Romanian Black Sea coastal area is not as developed and popular as that in other areas of the Balkan Peninsula, it has particular advantages due to its geographical position close to the Danube and its delta, as well as its historical and cultural heritage. Between 2014 and 2019, the south marinas of Romania’s Black Sea coast experienced a 65% increase in the number of visiting boats. Despite some decreases in traffic during the pandemic, the general trend continues to be upward. An evaluation of the operational capacities and policies implemented by tourist ports and relevant stakeholders identifies the strengths and weaknesses of the current system and provides insights into the current activity and implemented policies of the four most known and developed marinas along the Romanian Black Sea coast. The study’s main objective is to assess sustainable practices in relation to the environmental, social, and economic systems, with a focus on environmental protection, the use of renewable energy sources, and the implementation of quality management standards. The study uses a mix of qualitative and quantitative analyses to achieve this. Interviews with representatives of the four coastal marinas helped gather the data. The size of boat traffic was evaluated by taking into consideration the data from the local harbor master. The research identified gaps and highlighted areas that require improvement, subsequently providing recommendations to enhance sustainability. The findings can guide policymakers and stakeholders in developing practices that can promote the growth of recreational nautical transport in Romania while ensuring the sustainable development of the sector. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Maritime and Inland Waterways Transportation)
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19 pages, 2762 KiB  
Article
A Model to Manage the Lane-Changing Conflict for Automated Vehicles Based on Game Theory
by Liling Zhu, Da Yang, Zhiwei Cheng, Xiaoyue Yu and Bin Zheng
Sustainability 2023, 15(4), 3063; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15043063 - 08 Feb 2023
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1465
Abstract
In this study, we propose a lane-changing conflict management model based on game theory for automated vehicles. When a vehicle plans to change to the adjacent lane, and if there is a closely following vehicle on that lane, the following vehicle must sacrifice [...] Read more.
In this study, we propose a lane-changing conflict management model based on game theory for automated vehicles. When a vehicle plans to change to the adjacent lane, and if there is a closely following vehicle on that lane, the following vehicle must sacrifice its speed to make space for the lane-changing vehicle, which means there are conflicts of interest between two vehicles. So far, there is no clear answer if the following vehicle should make space for the lane-changing vehicle. These individualistic lane-changing models may lead to suboptimal traffic flow or even traffic safety issues. To solve this problem, this study designed a model based on game theory to solve lane-changing conflicts between the lane-changing vehicle and the following vehicle in the target lane. When the two vehicles enter a lane-changing conflict, the payoffs of the two vehicles under various combinations of strategies were evaluated, and the final strategy and the acceleration for each vehicle were obtained based on the principle of benefit equilibrium. The simulation is conducted to analyze the game strategy of the lane-changing vehicle (LV) and the close rear vehicle (RV) in the process of lane-changing from different initial positions. The results show that, under the hypothesis scenario in the simulation, the strategy {changing a lane, avoiding } will be chosen when the RV is initially located in the range of [0, 40 m], while {not changing a lane, not avoiding} is more appropriate when the initial position of the RV is in the range of [41 m, 90 m]. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Maritime and Inland Waterways Transportation)
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23 pages, 480 KiB  
Article
An Adaptive Tabu Search Algorithm for Solving the Two-Dimensional Loading Constrained Vehicle Routing Problem with Stochastic Customers
by Zheng Zhang, Bin Ji and Samson S. Yu
Sustainability 2023, 15(2), 1741; https://doi.org/10.3390/su15021741 - 16 Jan 2023
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 2180
Abstract
In practical logistic distributions, uncertainties may exist in each distribution process, and sometimes suppliers have to take undesirable measures to deal with the subsequent schedule variances. In light of the uncertainty of customers in logistics distribution and the widely applied two-dimensional loading patterns [...] Read more.
In practical logistic distributions, uncertainties may exist in each distribution process, and sometimes suppliers have to take undesirable measures to deal with the subsequent schedule variances. In light of the uncertainty of customers in logistics distribution and the widely applied two-dimensional loading patterns in transportation, we propose and formulate a two-dimensional loading-constrained vehicle routing problem with stochastic customers (2L-VRPSC), where each customer has a known probability of presence and customers’ demands are a set of non-stackable items. A stochastic modeling platform of 2L-VRPSC is established based on a Monte Carlo simulation and scenario analysis to minimize the expected total transportation cost. To achieve this, an enhanced adaptive tabu search (EATS) algorithm incorporating the multi-order bottom-fill-skyline (MOBFS) packing heuristic is proposed, where the EATS algorithm searches for the optimal routing combination and the MOBFS checks the feasibility of each route and guides the EATS to search for feasible solutions. The widely used two-dimensional loading-constrained vehicle routing problem (2L-VRP) benchmarks under different loading configurations considering items’ sequential and rotation constraints are applied for experiments, which demonstrates the comparable efficiency of the proposed EATS-MOBFS for solving 2L-VRP. Furthermore, the results and analysis of experiments based on the new 2L-VRPSC instances verify the versatility of the proposed solving approach, which is capable of providing more practical solutions to some real-life scenarios with customers’ uncertain information. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Maritime and Inland Waterways Transportation)
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