Study On Service Quality Based Lock Planning Simulation

Hydraulic structure is a two-edge weapon. At one hand it brings enormous economic and social benefits to the country, and at the other hand it will brings some negative effects to waterway transportation. It is the case in the Three Gorges Dam. It is well known that the Dam is a great project unprecedented in the human history and act as the waterborne transport hub in the Yangtze River in China. However, due to the dramatic growth of inland shipping, More and more the Three Gorges Lock is becoming the bottleneck of transiting. Its transiting capacity directly determines the capacity of the corridor of the River. In this context, effective scheduling will undoubtedly play significant role in improving the capacity of lock transit. Therefore, study on lock planning is edge-cutting and demanding.As two main themes of waterborne transportation, safety and efficiency, interacts with each other. To blindly pursuing capacity is often counterproductive. For example, to only improve the capacity will cause the violation of safety rules and finally increase the risk of accidents, which will result in huge loss of life and property, and navigation may be closed. The same is true. If too many attentions on safety, the efficiency will decrease, which will cause ships' long time waiting and delay. That means the money loss to the ship owners. Also that will lead to bigger waste of energy and environmental pollution. So, this article introduces the concept of service quality into the lock planning system. The SERVQUAL gap model for the lock system is developed from the original SERVQUAL and with five properties and 22 items.On the basis of the on-scene visiting the Lock, the current situation is investigated. The operation mechanism of lock system and ship arrival patterns are presented. Finally a computer simulation program is coded to support decision making during lock planning. This program is designed as a message-oriented discrete event system, under Microsoft Visual Studio 2008. NET. It not only can provide quantitative assessment of service quality for any planning scheme, but also provide a useful tool for operators to understand the complex planning problem and promote the steady growth of transit capacity.