An effective heuristic for yard template design in land-scarce container terminals

Due to limited storage space and heavy workload, container stacking in many Asian seaports is of high density. The method of yard storage template design, which effectively allocates yard space for incoming containers, is critical for utilizing yard storage resources and facilitating yard operations. This research studies the problem with a periodical vessel calling pattern that resource planning for berths and the yard area can be processed simultaneously in different hierarchies. It aims at optimally allocating slots to export containers in an area associated with a home berth achieving a space-saving template design. A two-phase solution method is proposed and an effective heuristic is developed to quickly decide the exact shape and location of yard clusters to be fitted into the template with a suitable order.