Research On Shipping Empty Containers Allocation Optimization Considering Environment Cost

The unbalanced development of intermational trade has aggravated the contradiction between supply and demand of empty containers,which are mainly transported by containers.The cost of empty containers allocation accounts for a large proportion of the total cost of shipping companies.With the attention of shipping industry to low-carbon green shipping,mainly carbon and sulphur emissions,how to design an empty container shipping system,optimize the cost scheme of empty container shipping,and then reduce the cost of shipping,reduce environmental pollution,etc.,is an important issue to be solved urgently by shipping companies and academia.Based on the cost of shipping company's dispatching,this paper adopts the method of combining qualitative analysis with quantitative calculation.This paper introduces in detail the problems related to empty container dispatching by sea,and analyses the causes,connotations and common dispatching strategies of empty container dispatching,so as to clarify the significance of this study.Through the qualitative elaboration of the cost of empty container dispatching,including the composition of the cost,influencing factors,cost control measures and the relationship between carbon and sulfur emissions and empty container dispatching,this paper deeply understands the cost of empty container dispatching and lays a foundation for the construction of quantitative model.Based on the cost of each link of empty container dispatching and whether carbon and sulfur emissions are considered,this paper fully considers the operation of multiple vessels and multiple docking ports on the dispatching route,and constructs the optimization model for empty container dispatching,which considers environmental cost(shipping carbon and sulphUr emissions cost).The main cost items of the model include empty container ocean transportation cost and rent.Box cost,loading and unloading cost,storage cost and environmental cost,etc.The model is validated by the case study of Eurasian international routes and solved by optimization software.The results show that the cost of model(considering the environmental cost)is about 75%higher than that of model(without considering the environmental cost),and the number of liners participating in the shipping is reduced.By analyzing the sensitivity of the parameters of the model to the transfer cost,it shows that the change of transport cost is not significant to the total transfer cost,and the change of carbon and sulfur emission index has a significant impact on the total empty box transfer cost.The research results have certain guiding significance for shipping companies to rationally arrange shipping empty container dispatching routes,determine empty container dispatching volume,and formulate dispatching strategies.