Title: A tabu search approach to the cargo prioritisation and terminal allocation problem

Authors: Jingjing Tong; Heather Nachtmann

Addresses: Department of Engineering and Technology, Southeast Missouri State University One University Plaza – MS6825, Cape Girardeau, MO 63701, USA ' Maritime Transportation Research and Education Center (MarTREC), College of Engineering, University of Arkansas, 4184 Bell Engineering Center, Fayetteville, AR 72701, USA

Abstract: To mitigate inland waterway disruption impacts, we develop a tabu search (TS) approach to solve the cargo prioritisation and terminal allocation problem (CPTAP) to minimise the total value loss of disrupted barge cargoes by offloading the cargoes to the land transportation modes. CPTAP is formulated as a nonlinear binary integer program, and problems of realistic size can be efficiently and effectively solved with an efficient heuristic approach. Given different neighbourhood structures, multiple TS variants are attempted and compared. Solving CPTAP with our TS heuristic leads to the lowest cargo value loss and the shortest response time for the disrupted barges compared to a genetic algorithm approach and a na

Keywords: metaheuristics; OR in maritime industry; inland waterway transportation; cargo prioritisation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTL.2020.107219

International Journal of Shipping and Transport Logistics, 2020 Vol.12 No.3, pp.147 - 173

Received: 11 Apr 2018
Accepted: 10 Sep 2018
Published online: 11 May 2020 *