Simulation modeling of Houston Ship Channel vessel traffic for optimal closure scheduling

This paper focuses on simulation and analysis of the Houston Ship Channel vessel traffic and operation, through a discrete event model in Arena. The model is applied to mitigate the consequences of the channel closure for constructing a new bridge over the waterway. To evaluate different closure scenarios, real world data is analyzed, and a single factor ANOVA is used to find significant vessel waiting time differences. In addition, Fisher pairwise comparison method is applied to specify the best closure alternative. The results reveal that the best closure scenario will decrease waiting time up to 70%. The model can be used for assessing the performance of the system under different decision making frameworks.