This paper considers a berth allocation problem (BAP) which requires the determination of exact berthing times and positions of incoming ships in a container port. The problem is solved by optimizing the berth schedule so as to minimize concurrently the three objectives of makespan, waiting time, and degree of deviation from a predetermined priority schedule. These objectives represent the interests of both port and ship operators. Unlike most existing approaches in the literature which are single-objective-based, a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm (MOEA) that incorporates the concept of Pareto optimality is proposed for solving the multi-objective BAP. The MOEA is equipped with three primary features which are specifically designed to target the optimization of the three objectives. The features include a local search heuristic, a hybrid solution decoding scheme, and an optimal berth insertion procedure. The effects that each of these features has on the quality of berth schedules are studied.

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Context-aware applications are required to be aware of user context and ambient intelligent to support nonintrusive humancomputer interaction. However, the uncertain real-world environments make it difficult for a system to perceive enough environmental contexts and achieve user's goal. Therefore, this study proposes a framework for developing an NFC-enabled intelligent agent, which combines the NFC technique with context-acquisition, ontology-knowledgebase, and semantic-adaptation modules to be aware of location, time, device, and activity contexts with respect to personal and social profiles. To cope with the uncertain environment, a credit-based incentive scheme is also proposed to encourage social cooperation and thereby enlarge the value of personal perceptions. By developing a complete ontology knowledgebase, the proposed framework can incorporate with social-cooperation schemes to recommend relevant services for supporting reactive action, proactive achievement, and social cooperation. The resultant social-advertising system shows that this framework can support a wide-range of different functionalities and is indispensable to an NFC-based intelligent agent for social Internet of things.

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