A Base Integer Programming Model and Benchmark Suite for Liner-Shipping Network Design

TLDR: The liner-shipping network design problem is proved to be strongly NP-hard and a benchmark suite of data instances to reflect the business structure of a global liner shipping network is presented.

Abstract: The liner-shipping network design problem is to create a set of nonsimple cyclic sailing routes for a designated fleet of container vessels that jointly transports multiple commodities. The objective is to maximize the revenue of cargo transport while minimizing the costs of operation. The potential for making cost-effective and energy-efficient liner-shipping networks using operations research OR is huge and neglected. The implementation of logistic planning tools based upon OR has enhanced performance of airlines, railways, and general transportation companies, but within the field of liner shipping, applications of OR are scarce. We believe that access to domain knowledge and data is a barrier for researchers to approach the important liner-shipping network design problem. The purpose of the benchmark suite and the paper at hand is to provide easy access to the domain and the data sources of liner shipping for OR researchers in general. We describe and analyze the liner-shipping domain applied to network design and present a rich integer programming model based on services that constitute the fixed schedule of a liner shipping company. We prove the liner-shipping network design problem to be strongly NP-hard. A benchmark suite of data instances to reflect the business structure of a global liner shipping network is presented. The design of the benchmark suite is discussed in relation to industry standards, business rules, and mathematical programming. The data are based on real-life data from the largest global liner-shipping company, Maersk Line, and supplemented by data from several industry and public stakeholders. Computational results yielding the first best known solutions for six of the seven benchmark instances is provided using a heuristic combining tabu search and heuristic column generation.

Full text

General rights
Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the public portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright
owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognise and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights.
 Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the public portal for the purpose of private study or research.
 You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain
 You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the public portal
If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact us providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately
and investigate your claim.
Downloaded from orbit.dtu.dk on: Aug 10, 2022
A Base Integer Programming Model and Benchmark Suite for Liner-Shipping Network
Design
Brouer, Berit Dangaard; Alvarez, Fernando; Plum, Christian Edinger Munk; Pisinger, David; Sigurd,
Mikkel M.
Published in:
Transportation Science
Link to article, DOI:
10.1287/trsc.2013.0471
Publication date:
2014
Link back to DTU Orbit
Citation (APA):
Brouer, B. D., Alvarez, F., Plum, C. E. M., Pisinger, D., & Sigurd, M. M. (2014). A Base Integer Programming
Model and Benchmark Suite for Liner-Shipping Network Design. Transportation Science, 48(2), 281-312 .
https://doi.org/10.1287/trsc.2013.0471

I

II
CONTENTS
WELCOME ................................................................................................ III
ORGANIZATION ................................................................................... V
INSTITUTIONAL SUPPORT ........................................................... VI
ABOUT THE CONFERENCE ........................................................... VII
REGISTRATION ..................................................................................... VIII
VENUES ...................................................................................................... IX
SOCIAL EVENTS .................................................................................... XIV
OPENING SESSION .............................................................................. XVI
CLOSING SESSION ............................................................................... XVII
GUIDELINES FOR SESSION CHAIRS .......................................... XVIII
GUIDELINES FOR SPEAKERS ......................................................... XVIII
GENERAL INFORMATION .............................................................. XIX
STATISTICS .............................................................................................. XX
EURO AWARDS AND PRIZES .......................................................... XXI
INVITED SPEAKERS ............................................................................ XXIII
SPONSORS / EXHIBITORS ............................................................... XXXVI
OVERVIEW OF THE PROGRAMME ............................................. XLI
TECHNICAL SESSIONS ..................................................................... LI

III
WELCOME
Dear participant,
It is a great pleasure to welcome you to the 25th EURO conference in Vilnius.  e conference o ers you
the opportunity to meet the EURO community and the many researchers coming from outside the EURO
region. It also o ers you an exposure to the evolution of the several areas that compose Operational Research,
to keep you updated on our continuously evolving dynamic discipline. During the conference you will
certainly meet old and new colleagues, exchange ideas, develop new projects. You will also feel and enjoy the
special atmosphere of Vilnius and Lithuania.
 e scienti c and social programs are very rich and I invite you to explore the several options o ered
by the conference. Among the options there are a few that I wish to emphasize because of their exceptional
level: the lecture of Ralph E. Gomory, who has given some of the most fundamental contributions to
Operational Research, and the lecture of the Nobel prize winner Finn E. Kydland, who will link economics
to our discipline. Another exceptional event that will take place during the conference is the special
session dedicated to EURO and its Presidents. EURO has had 18 Presidents since its foundation in 1976.
Besides awarding the Past Presidents for their contribution to EURO, in this special session Hans-Jürgen
Zimmermann, the  rst President of EURO, will go back to the roots of EURO and will depict the evolution
of the EURO community over time. I invite you also to visit the Springer stand and have a look at the  rst
issue of the EURO Journal on Transportation and Logistics, one of the three new EURO journals.
I am con dent you will  nd the 25th EURO conference stimulating, rewarding and pleasant and that
you will enjoy your staying in Vilnius.
M.Grazia Speranza
President of EURO

IV
Dear conference participants,
It is a great honour and pleasure to welcome you to the 25th European Conference on Operational Research
- EURO XXV in Vilnius on 8 - 11 July, 2012.
 e theme of the conference is - OR Connecting Sciences. Operational Research is a multi-disciplinary
 eld in its own right. It provides strategies and decisions for individuals as well as for institutions, taking into
account the complex interactions between people and the world. By connecting to a larger set of existing
and new sciences, it is our hope that OR can become an instrument for providing adequate solutions to new
challenges in business, technology and society as whole.
EURO XXV will focus on the most relevant topics and issues in European and global science
in the  eld of OR theory and advanced applications via our three plenaries, a set of twelve keynote and
tutorial lectures, presentations by award winners and candidates for these awards as well as by invited and
contributing speakers. With 524 sessions and almost 2000 presentations and more than 2100 participants
from 68 countries, EURO XXV will provide a stimulating opportunity for a global interchange of ideas on
all recent advances in OR.
We would like to take this opportunity to express our sincere thanks to all who have supported us in
preparing this event. We are grateful to the members of the Programme Committee, who organized twenty
 ve main areas consisting of 153 streams, and to the stream organizers, who coordinated the invited sessions
and managed to attract so many researchers. We warmly thank the members of the Organising Committee
and the EURO XXV Secretariat for their priceless dedication and hard work in putting everything together.
In the tradition of the EURO conferences a number of social events are scheduled, and we believe that
EURO XXV will also be a special experience for all of us. Vilnius is the historical capital of Lithuania dating
back to the 14th century.  e city has the most beautiful old town. It has been awarded the status of World
Cultural Heritage by UNESCO and its university is one of the oldest in Eastern Europe. Vilnius is rapidly
expanding as a modern European capital, so you will have the opportunity of experiencing the harmonious
meeting of old and new.
We wish you all an interesting, exciting, and enjoyable time in Vilnius.
Marielle Christiansen
Chair of Programme Committee
Leonidas Sakalauskas
Chair of Organising Committee

Frequently asked questions

Q1. What are the common methods used for the problems?

In the literature, while integer programming and network models are usually employed at the modeling stage, dynamic programming, branch-and-bound algorithm, heuristics and metaheuristics are the prevalent computational methods employed for the problems. 

Q2. What have the authors stated for future works in "A base integer programming model and benchmark suite for liner-shipping network design" ?

In others there are still or again big challenges that have to be met, if OR is also to be successful in the future. In this presentation some of these challenges will be considered in more detail and some ways suggested, how they can possibly be met. 

Q3. What is the working hypothesis of the talk?

Their working hypothesis is that erraticism is just a consequence of the exponential nature of tree search, that acts as a chaotic ampliW er, so it is largely unavoidable. 

Q4. What is the role of dynamic programming in macroeconomics?

In quantitative aggregate economics, dynamic programming plays a key role from model formulation to model calibration to computation of model outcomes. 

Q5. How can you scale up to 10 million binary decision variables?

Relying on local search, LocalSolver is able to scale up to 10 million binary decision variables, running on standard computers.! 

Q6. What is the W rst step in the strategic planning of a transport system?

Given an existing public transportation network with its stops (or stations) and direct connections, the W rst step in the strategic planning of a transport system is to deW ne lines and their frequencies. 

Q7. What is the role of steady-state relations in macroeconomics?

In the process, for example, of calibrating a model economy, its steady-state relations are an essential part of what it takes to work backwards from empirical relations among variables to what the model parameters must be in order to be consistent with them. 

Q8. What is the winning recipe for a successful OR curriculum?

N e winning recipe includes ingredients such as spreadsheets, real-time modeling (“slow learning”), course management system, web tools, on-line communication, large classes, labs, student assistants, videos, guest speakers, on-line exams, and group projects; all delivered with a heavy emphasis on applications, and with a student-centered pedagogical approach. 

Q9. How many refereed papers have she written?

She wrote two and edited six books, and she co-authored around 75 refereed papers most of them been published in international journals. 

Q10. Who is the Chair of the IFORS XX?

Leondidas Sakalauskas, Chair of the Organizing CommitteeXVIIIN e role of the Chair is to coordinate and ensure the smooth running of the session. 

Q11. What is the free academic license for AIMMS?

the Free Academic License allows the usage of the AIMMS Robust Optimization add-on for decision making problems under uncertainty. 

Q12. Where did he join the UCSB faculty?

Ag er previous appointments at NHH, CMU, and the University of Texas at Austin, he joined the UCSB faculty in 2004, where he is also the director of the Laboratory for Aggregate Economics and Finance. 

Q13. Where is Kenneth Sörensen's research group located?

14:30 - 16:00, RB-Alfa Chair: Marc Sevaux, Université De Bretagne-Sud, Lorient, FranceKenneth Sörensen is professor at the Faculty of Applied Economics of the University of Antwerp, where he also obtained his PhD. Kenneth Sörensen chairs the research group ANT/OR (University of Antwerp Operations Research Group), a group that focuses on applications of Operations Research in diverse domains, and on the development of optimization algorithms, especially metaheuristics. 

Q14. What universities were he a visiting faculty member?

Between 1985 and 2005, he taught at the University of Alberta’s School of Business, and was a visiting faculty member at the Univ. of Geneva, Ohio State Univ., NIDA (Bangkok), as well as Bogazici and Sabanci Universities. 

Q15. What was his role as the Founding Rector of Ozyegin University?

He served as Dean of the Faculty of Business Administration of Bilkent University between 2005 and 2007, before starting to serve as the Founding Rector of Ozyegin University in 2008.