Optimising Feeder Routing for Container Ships through an Electronic Chart Display and Information System

Large container ships can only be berthed in hub ports with deep water, which requires a feeder ship service to transit and transport containers from the hub ports. This paper presents a feeder routing optimisation method for container ships through an intelligent Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS). ECDIS has been adopted to design routes and calculate the estimated time of arrival in two ports, and a mixed integer programming model is established for container vessel regional transportation where the shortest ship sailing time is designated as the objective function. In this paper, through using heuristic tour-route coding, the solution of the model based on genetic algorithms is presented to select ship capacities and routes simultaneously. Taking the Pearl River in China as an example, for different types of vessel capacity, vessel costs and fuel costs, 100 TEU and 150 TEU ship capacities with six optimal routes are selected to minimise sailing time and operating costs.