The influence of storage area design on maritime container terminal capacity

Abstract

The storage areas from maritime container terminals have the role to allow the transfer of containers from maritime ships to inland transport and vice versa or from a maritime ship to another. The number of slots in storage area must be higher enough to not restrict the activity in terminal. In the case of containers loaded with dangerous goods, specifically rules must be applied in accordance with international maritime laws. Applying the security policies will enforce special conditions for storage of containers along with other containers or in a dedicated area for containers loaded with dangerous goods. All these measures lead to a limitation of the storage capacity inside the terminal. In the paper, the authors studying the influence of storage area design, in accordance with handling and storage restrictions of containers loaded with dangerous goods, on container terminal capacity. Taking into consideration the multi-flows interaction and the non-uniform arrivals of vessels and inland vehicles, discrete event simulation stands as a feasible technique for investigate terminal capacity for different organizational schemes of the storage area. The activities conducted inside of container terminal are represented using a logical model and implemented in ARENA software. A simulation model is developed and used to evaluate the variation of terminal activity's parameters. A set of input scenarios are developed to analyse and identify how to organize the activity in the terminal, namely how to segregate the containers within the storage area. The estimation of the general parameters of activity performance obtained through computer simulation helps the container terminal administration to choose an optimal use of storage area.