Hybrid simulation and optimization approach for green intermodal transportation problem with travel time uncertainty

Abstract

The increasing volumes of road transportation contribute to congestion on road, which leads to delays and other negative impacts on the reliability of transportation. Moreover, transportation is one of the main contributors to the growth of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions, where the impact of road transportation is significant. Therefore, governmental organizations and private commercial companies are looking for greener transportation solutions to eliminate the negative externalities of road transportation. In this paper, we present a novel solution framework to support the operational-level decisions for intermodal transportation networks using a combination of an optimization model and simulation. The simulation model includes stochastic elements in form of uncertain travel times, whereas the optimization model represents a deterministic and linear multi-commodity service network design formulation. The intermodal transportation plan can be optimized according to different objectives, including costs, time and CO 2 e emissions. The proposed approach is successfully implemented to real-life scenarios where differences in transportation plans for alternative objectives are presented. DOI 10.1007/s10696-016-9267-1 show that the approach is capable of delivering reliable solutions and identifying possible disruptions and alternatives for adapting the unreliable transportation plans.

Fuzzy Programming Approaches for Modeling a Customer-Centred Freight Routing Problem in the Road-Rail Intermodal Hub-and-Spoke Network with Fuzzy Soft Time Windows and Multiple Sources of Time Uncertainty

“…Therefore, it is not completely applicable to use the piecewise linear cost function to represent the economic objective function. Currently, the majority of the existing studies employ generalized costs to formulate the charges for accomplishing the transportation orders, e.g., Sun et al [1,18,25,30], Ayar and Yaman [31], Hrušovský et al [2] and Demir et al [3]. Generalized costs have a structure shown as Figure 2 [30,33,34] and thus cover all the payment created in the activities of the intermodal transportation.…”

“…Consequently, some studies on the intermodal routing problem propose the concept of soft due dates, so that penalty can be used to reduce the degree of both earliness and lateness of the delivery. Hrušovský et al [2] and Demir et al [3] use soft time points to represent the due dates. In their studies, the penalty cost is linear with the degree of the earliness or lateness.…”

“…Sun et al [1,18,30] and Fazayeli et al [46] explore the intermodal location-routing problem with due dates denoted by soft time windows. In Fazayeli et al's study, the penalty cost strategy that is the same as that of Hrušovský et al [2] and Demir et al [3] is used to optimize the timeliness of the intermodal transportation. In many cases, however, violation of the soft due date time windows does not lead to a penalty cost [44].…”

“…The current research progress on the intermodal routing problem with operational time uncertainty is illustrated by Figure 4. Hrušovský et al [2] and Demir et al [3] explore the green intermodal routing problem with travel time uncertainty. Stochastic programming is employed by their study to model the uncertain travel time.…”

“…Globalization and accompanying international trade enable companies to take advantage of the rich market resources of the entire world, including outsourcing businesses to professional partners to reduce production cost and extending markets to seek more customers to make more profit [1][2][3]. As a result, international freight transportation has a positive trend and its volume will increase fourfold by 2050 [4].…”