Community structure based global hub location problem in liner shipping

This paper proposes a global hub location problem (GHLP) in liner shipping considering community structure. A two-stage optimization method is developed to solve the proposed problem. In the first stage, ports are partitioned into different communities by using a community detection algorithm. In the second stage, we determine the location of hub ports for various communities, respectively. The optimal hub location solution for each considered community can be independently determined. Then the problem size can be sharply decreased. More importantly, we find that it forms a community structure based optimal solution of the GHLP by combining the optimal hub location solutions for all considered communities. Numerical experiments are carried out to account for the effectiveness of our two-stage optimization method.