A case based heuristic for container stacking in seaport terminals

In this paper, we suggest a Case Based heuristic for the online container stacking management system in seaport terminals. The main objectives of the system are to determine the exact position of each import container in the storage area and to control container allocation and react to unexpected events and disturbances in an intelligent, self-organizing and real-time manner. First, we propose learning mechanisms and knowledge models for a better management of knowledge related to disturbances and container environment. This system takes into account different types of containers especially the storage of dangerous containers. For assessment of the suggested system, real data are collected from King Abdul Aziz Dammam seaport terminal (Saudi Arabia). The performance of the developed heuristic is assessed with different scenarios and compared to three other stacking strategies studied in the scientific literature. The obtained results are promising and show that the developed CBR (Case Based Reasoning) based heuristic can be efficient or similar problems, i.e. online container staking.