Real-time transportation replanning in intermodal networks under disturbances

Container transportation plans are often subject to disturbances upon arrival of new information in such intermodal networks and requires replanning in real-time. These disturbances can be due to arrival of new shipment orders, fluctuations in shipment quantities, delays and/or service cancellations within the network. Therefore, real-time decisions are to be made aftermath of such dynamic information changes. This study addresses real-time replanning of container transportation over intermodal networks under disturbances. The problem is formulated as a path-based multi-commodity network flow problem on a space-time network that is scalable to large transportation networks. The resulting problem is solved using a column generation algorithm where the pricing sub-problems arise to be a resource constrained shortest path problem which is solved via a label-correcting algorithm. We derive managerial insights by comparing dıfferent scenarios. To that end, we have performed a set of computational experiments on randomly generated test instances that mimic real-life. Our results are promising and provide quick solutions that can be used for practical implementations of real-time transportation replanning. 

Authors: M. Hakan Akyüz, Rommert Dekker, Shadi Sharif Azadeh 

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