The Liner Shipping Hub Port Location Problem Under Uncertainty

The development of cross-border trade has promoted the development of the maritime industry.In international trade,about 80% of the trade volume is completed by sea,and container liner shipping is one of the important components of maritime transportation.Affected by factors such as weather and hydrology,crude oil prices,and international politics,there are many changing factors in container liner shipping.These uncertain factors will affect the cost and transportation demand of liner shipping,thus affect the overall strategy formulation of the liner shipping network.Due to the uncertainty of container transportation demand and transportation cost,liner companies need to adjust their liner shipping network every 3 to 6months.During the adjustment process,the decision on the location of hub ports is the basis and premise of network optimization.The reasonable plan of hub port locations and feeder port allocations can help liner companies reduce operating costs,improve service levels,and improve industry competitiveness.In the process of hub port location,some parameters cannot be determined in advance,and once such uncertain factors occur,the previous hub port location results may not be optimal.Therefore,from the perspective of a single liner company,this thesis studies the location of container liner shipping hub ports while considering uncertain factors.Based on the uncertain factors and the spatial structure characteristics of the liner shipping network,several mathematical programming models are proposed.Firstly,a deterministic hub port location model(HPLP)is proposed.Furthermore,the hub port location model with uncertain transportation demand(HPLP-UD),the hub port location model with uncertain transportation cost(HPLP-UTC),and the hub port location model with uncertain transportation demand and uncertain transportation cost(HPLP-UDTC)are proposed.Robust optimization method is used to address the uncertain hub port location models.Subsequently,based on the container transportation data between Asia and Europe provided by the liner company,several numerical experiments were carried out.The effectiveness and robustness of the model proposed in this thesis can be proved by comparing the solution results of the uncertainty model proposed in this thesis with the deterministic hub port location model.In addition,this thesis also analyzes the results of hub port location results under different parameters and different number of hub ports.On the one hand,the research in this thesis can provide a certain reference for the liner companies to formulate the selection plan of the hub port,which makes the selection result robust.On the other hand,it also helps liner companies discover the development potential of some ports in time,so as to update or adjust their planning and operation strategies.