Dynamic ship lock scheduler for waterway networks
conference paper
Uncertain passage times at ship infrastructures, i.e, locks and moveable bridges, are partially due to contemporary operating regimes on European inland waterways. This uncertainty results in added waiting times and fuel consumption. This study presents a dynamic scheduler for a network of ship infrastructures, accommodating so-called mixed traffic of ships with both pre-announced arrivals and ad-hoc announcement at arrival. An iterative approach is presented that a) solves the single infrastructure scheduling problem via best-first tree search, and that b) addresses the interdependency of ship infrastructure passage slots at network level, resulting in a reliable, schedules for the entire waterway network. Comparing the proposed scheduler against a current day regime in simulation shows efficiency improvements. Simulating different scenarios of mixed traffic shows that the proposed scheduler can provide reliable passage slots over multiple scheduling iterations, with efficiency improvement compared to contemporary operating regimes. These results imply that the proposed approach has significant potential in reducing waiting time and fuel consumption compared to current practice.
TNO Identifier
1006334
Source title
International Association of Maritime Economists conference (IAME24), Valencia, Spain, June 26-28, 2024
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