Robust Optimization Of Liner Shipping Network Of The Yangtze River Considering Fanba And Weather Influences

As a transportation method with massive transportation capacity and competititive freight rate, Yangtze River plays an important role in the economy construction in China. More and more attention has been paid to making this "golden waterway" play more important role by strengthening the transportation system of Yangtze River, especially the container liner network. The liner shipping of Yangtze River has the three following characteristics:1) the river network is closely-coodinated with other land transportation system, and they are complementary and competing.2) The transportation capacity during the Three George region is inadequent. This region has complicated transportation system because cargo can either be transported by vessel through Three George, or executed intermodal transportation of "river-road-river" by going through Fanba Highway.3) Yangtze River is so wide spread that it is vulnerable to be affected by bad weather, which will lead to port congestion and force some cargoes to be transported by land transportation. In this context, while taking Fanba transport and weather influences into considertation, this paper studies the competition and cooperation relationship between the waterway and land transportation and optimize the liner shipping network of mainstream in Yangtze River.Firstly, the characteritics of liner shipping network in mainstream Yangtze River is analyzed and the influence of Fanba transport and bad weather has on shipping network optimization is proposed. Secondly, a comprehensive transportation network platform consisting of water and land transportation routes is established, and the impedance function on each route is determined. A bi-level optimization model is built to determine the shipping network structure, fleet size and calling frequency. Thirdly, Fanba transport which limits the transportation capacity of Yangtze River is considered to make the model more specific. And then, taking the transportation and waiting time of waterway, and handling time in port as control variables, a robust optimization model which is influenced by different weather scenarios is established to illustrate the robustness of model. Genetic algorithm is applied to solve the model. Lastly, taking12ports on mainstream of Yangtze River and28inland cities as waterway nodes and land nodes respectively, the case study is performed. The calculation results indicate that the optimization scheme which considers Fanba and weather influence is more practical. The robust model is not only solution robust, but also model robust. This model can provide theretical method for the shipping network optimization of Yangtze River.