Research On Hub Port Location Problem In Liner Shipping Network

With the end of the COVID-19,the global economy has begun to recover,maritime trade has rebounded.As a very important part of maritime transportation,container liner shipping has also increased its trade volume.Container liner shipping plays an irreplaceable role in the economic development of both developed and developing countries.The location of hub port is a key strategic decision faced by liner companies.In practice,liner companies of different scales serve different objects and face different problems of hub port location decision.Therefore,liner companies of different scales need to select appropriate hub ports for different liner shipping networks to improve their economic benefits and customer satisfaction.In this regard,this thesis focuses on the application of hub location problem in the liner shipping industry,and studies the hub port location problem in different liner shipping networks such as single region,multiple regions and the world from the perspective of liner companies of different scales.Based on the spatial characteristics of liner shipping,the three parts are connected in series,and different factors are considered to study the hub port location problem in the three liner shipping networks.This enriches the research field of container liner shipping,provides support for location decisions of liner companies in different shipping networks,and achieves reasonable call for hub ports to reduce operating costs and improve profit margins.The details are as follows:(1)Aiming at the liner shipping hub port location problem in a single region,a special hierarchical hub location problem is discussed based on the hierarchical division of ports within the region.Due to the characteristics of a single region,the regional import and export demand rather than OD demand is considered,and it is regarded as a special facility location problem for modeling.Given the international hub port,four different container transportation modes are considered,and two mixed integer programming models of single allocation and multiple allocation are established.The Caribbean Sea region is taken as an example for analysis.By comparing the phase diagrams of three parameters with different values,namely,the transportation discount factor from regional hub port to international hub port,the transportation discount factor between international hub ports,and container traffic ratio in two directions of regional ports,the optimal regional hub port is found.The numerical results show that Jamaica or the Bahamas are the best choice for regional hub ports in the Caribbean Sea region.At the same time,it provides a basis for regional hub port location and regional feeder port allocation under different transportation discount factors and container traffic ratio,which has a strong practical significance for improving the operation of liner shipping companies.(2)Aiming at the liner shipping hub port location problem in multiple regions,different from the previous studies on liner shipping hub port location that only considered laden container transportation,this thesis combines the empty container repositioning with the liner shipping hub port location problem,and studies the of liner shipping hub port location problem considering empty container repositioning between regions.On this basis,considering the impact of economies of scale and transportation capacity on empty container repositioning,the influence of using foldable containers on the liner shipping hub port location problem is studied.The spatial structure of liner shipping is used to divide regions.Based on the classical hub location model,several mixed integer programming models are proposed.Taking container transportation between Asia and Northern Europe as an example,the influence of empty container repositioning and the use of foldable containers on hub port location and feeder port allocation is discussed.The results of numerical examples show that the improved models considering the spatial structure can improve the solving speed on the basis of the accuracy of the calculation results,which proves the effectiveness of the models.Southampton,Singapore and Shanghai also have a high probability of becoming hub ports when considering empty container repositioning.When foldable containers are used,Zeebrugge plays an important role in empty container repositioning between Asia and Northern Europe due to its cheap folding and unfolding operation costs.It shows that empty container repositioning has obvious influence on hub port location and feeder port allocation.Based on this,the container leasing pricing problem is discussed using inverse optimization technology to obtain the perceived container leasing prices for ports in Asia and Europe.(3)Aiming at the global liner shipping hub port location problem,considering the impact of hub failures,the location of alternate hub ports and the reallocation of feeder ports,and aiming at the minimum sum of normal operation costs and expected failure costs,two reliable liner shipping hub port location problems and their mixed integer programming models are proposed and studied.Aiming at the two models,the decomposition algorithm based on region division and Benders decomposition algorithm are designed for solving and comparing,and the numerical experiments are carried out based on the container demand data provided by Maersk Liner Company.The numerical experimental results show that the decomposition algorithm based on region division greatly reduces the solving time of the global liner shipping hub port location problem,and most of the world’s famous hub ports can be found,which proves the effectiveness of the model and algorithm.For most famous ports,their hub status is not significantly affected by different allocation schemes,but is closely related to their geographical position in the region and their own container demand.Compared with the classical hub location problem,the liner shipping network composed of hub port location and feeder port allocation scheme obtained by solving the reliable liner shipping hub port location problem has better performance and can greatly improve the container transportation volume.By considering the actual situation of different liner shipping networks such as single region,multiple regions and the world,and combining different influencing factors,this thesis constructs several reasonable liner shipping hub port location models,proposes several hub port location schemes according to local conditions,provides new ideas for the construction of hub location model and enriches the research of hub port location in the field of liner shipping.It provides some theoretical support for the location of hub ports,and also provides a reference for liner companies to design a reasonable shipping network,which is helpful for shipping enterprises to integrate port resources effectively,popularize the application of hub-and-spoke maritime network and improve the economy and stability of shipping network.