Assessing the value of vessel information sharing

Abstract

Efficient and timely vessel arrival planning is crucial for smooth operations in maritime transportation networks, ensuring optimal resource utilization and minimizing operational costs. When proforma schedules are disturbed by arrival deviations of vessels, waiting time and unnecessary fuel consumption become problems that shipping lines are faced with. Using a simulation model of a single-berth terminal, we test speed selection strategies for vessels that aim to minimize fuel, sailing, and waiting costs under varying availability of information. In different scenarios, we find optimality gaps ranging from 0.1% to 19.6% and show that knowing and communicating service end time to the vessel calling next could be valuable to integrated shipping lines and terminals.