Search

Queuing models and simulation are two primary methods applied to container terminal planning. Queuing models tend to result in underestimated outcomes due to ships and berths not being classified by size and length. This paper classified both ships and berths using actual data and then compared the resultant differences of the scenarios with and without classification with the simulation. The comparison shows that the outcomes with and without the classification of ships and berths are located opposite to the outcomes obtained from the simulation, which was deliberately constructed and rendered sufficiently accurate results. The optimal scale of facilities of a container terminal is located between the outcomes of the two proposed scenarios. There is no longer a need to establish a complex and tedious simulation model. The method proposed in this paper provides a convenient way to determine the optimum number of berths and facilities for a container terminal.

Given the recent prevalence of periodical container liners, the applicability of related models of widely applied queuing theory is left in doubt. Since they focus on marine liners, the distribution pattern is always considered to be a deterministic distribution for periodical schedule. In order to investigate the distribution patterns of container liners, observation units are segmented into single shipping liners, single berths, single container terminals and entire ports. The evolution of the ship arrival distribution pattern and the goodness-of-fit test for observation are based on the ship dynamic data of international harbors in Taiwan. This study aims to implement tests for public and dedicated container berths by comparing the variance in the patterns and characteristics of the ship arrival distributions. The ship inter-arrival distribution in the foregoing systems was found to follow the Erlang distribution; its distribution coefficient (k), changed by observation system, tends to decrease as the system's scale grows.