Vessel traffic scheduling optimization for passenger RoRo terminals with restricted harbor basin

Passenger Roll-on Roll-off (RoRo) shipping plays an essential role in short-distance waterway transport. An increasing number of RoRo passenger terminals adopt the layout of jetty berths in the restricted harbor basin surrounded by breakwater for the purpose of saving sea area, but ships cannot meet in the harbor basin due to inadequate water area. For the benefits of port authority, shipping company and maritime safety administration, it is an urgent problem to make a safe and efficient ship scheduling scheme in the busy RoRo passenger terminal with the restricted harbor basin. This paper formulates a multi-objective mathematical model for the integrated scheduling optimization of fairway and turning basin, with the minimum total scheduling time and total waiting time as the objective functions. Meanwhile, an adaptive ant colony optimization algorithm (AACO) is provided aimed at the proposed model, where minimizing the total waiting time is the fitness function. And the other one goal is reflected in heuristic information values, and then the selection process is affected. Numerical experiments on Xuwen terminal, the largest passenger RoRo terminal all around the world, indicate that the model has shorter total scheduling time and total waiting time compared with actual operation data. Effective solutions obtained by the proposed model and algorithm not only fundamentally increase safety and efficiency, but also improve the availability of turning basin and fairway. This study hence comes up with management insights to help port authority, shipping company and maritime safety administration.