Container Berth Expansion Planning with Dynamic Programming and Fuzzy Set Theory

An optimization method is proposed for optimal berth system expansion planning on container terminals to improve operation performance along with the growing container quantity. This planning problem is attributed to a multi-stage decision-making problem and its solution method is divided into two parts: (1) For the decision-making sequence in the long period, dynamic programming is used to determine the total optimal plan; (2) For a given time point, nonlinear search programming combined with discrete event simulation model is used for the local optimal berth system decision. The minimum total waiting time of ships is used as the objective function of performance evaluation. Fuzzy set theory is applied to deal with the uncertainty in performance judgments made by terminal management. With a case study, the optimal decision sequence on berth system expansion plan is determined, and the validity and feasibility of the proposed method is illustrated