Title: A new hub network design integrating deep sea and short sea services at liner shipping operations

Authors: Fábio Francisco Da Costa Fontes; Gilles Goncalves

Addresses: Departamento de Ciências Exatas e Naturais, Universidade Federal Rural do Semi-Árido, CEP: 59625-900, Mossoró RN, Brazil; Laboratoire de Génie Informatique et d'Automatique de l'Artois (LGI2A), Univ. Artois, EA 3926, Béthune, F-62400, France ' Laboratoire de Génie Informatique et d'Automatique de l'Artois (LGI2A), Univ. Artois, EA 3926, Béthune, F-62400, France

Abstract: Liner shipping is an increasingly attractive maritime transport, not only by the growing volume of goods transported in the world, but also by the diversity of products that can be carried and its service stability. At liner shipping operation, a hub and spoke structure is often used in which deep sea services take place at the hub network and short sea services can be done in the regional network between the hub and its respective spoke nodes. In this work a new hierarchical structure of hub and spoke with sub-hub is presented. Deep sea services and short sea services are depicted in circular form and the sub-hubs are intersection points of neighbour's regional networks. Both cargo-routing with transhipment in hub ports or in sub-hub ports are allowed. The binary integer linear programming model proposed in this work offers, together, a hub location with multiple-spoke allocation problem, a service design problem and the cargo routing problem. Experimental results show good performances comparatively to the classic hub and spoke network structure.

Keywords: Maritime transport; liner shipping; deep sea; short sea; network design; service design; hub and spoke; hierarchical structure; sub-hub; routing cargo; transhipment; hub location; multiple allocation; binary integer linear programming.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTL.2017.086363

International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics, 2017 Vol.9 No.5, pp.580 - 600

Received: 03 Aug 2015
Accepted: 23 Jun 2016
Published online: 04 Sep 2017 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article