Generation of Container Flows for Container Terminals
In maritime logistics, simulation and mathematical optimization are commonly used methods for planning, solving problems and evaluating solutions. For testing new solutions under realistic conditions, an extensive amount of actual operational data are urgently needed. Since comprehensive real-life data are often unavailable or classified, the generation of synthetic data is a helpful way to get around this issue. One such instance is when we want to study of the dynamics at a container terminal, the nodes which connect the seaside with the hinterland, transshipping containers between vessels of different sizes, trains, and trucks. The container terminal functions as a buffer between the modes and offers to keep the containers in the yard for some hours or days. The vehicle arrivals and the containers to be unloaded and loaded from the vehicle constitute the container flows through a terminal.
With ConFlowGen, short for Container Flow Generator, an IT tool has been developed at the Institute of Maritime Logistics which is capable of generating such synthetic scenarios. It has been first presented at the LDIC conference 2022 and has been subject to continous development since then. The tool has been deployed in internal projects at the institute as well as in theses of students. The source code is hosted at https://github.com/1kastner/conflowgen and is open source. The project is supervised by Marvin Kastner.
In case the project has sparked your interest, we'd like to learn more about you and maybe even your use case!
| [182402] |
| Title: Container Flow Generation for Maritime Container Terminals. <em>Dynamics in Logistics. Proceedings of the 8th International Conference LDIC 2022, Bremen, Germany</em> |
| Written by: Kastner, Marvin and Grasse, Ole and Jahn, Carlos |
| in: 2 (2022). |
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| on pages: 133-143 |
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| Editor: In Freitag, Michael and Kinra, Aseem, and Kotzab, Herbert, and Megow, Nicole (Eds.) |
| Publisher: Springer: |
| Series: LDIC 2022 |
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| DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-05359-7_11 |
| URL: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-05359-7_11 |
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Note: conflowgen
Abstract: In maritime logistics, mathematical optimization and simulation are widely-used methods for solving planning problems and evaluating solutions. When putting these solutions to test, extensive and reliable data are urgently needed but constantly scarce. Since comprehensive real-life data are often not available or are classified as sensitive business data, synthetic data generation is a beneficial way to rectify this deficiency. Even institutions which already own comprehensive container flow data are dependent on synthetic data, due to the need to adapt and test their business models to uncertain future developments. A synthetic data generator that creates incoming and outgoing containers from the perspective of a maritime container terminal has already been proposed. However, since its publication more than 15 years have passed and the industry has changed. This justifies to rethink, rework, and improve the existing solution. This paper presents a synthetic container flow generator which allows the user to create synthetic but yet realistic data of container flows for maritime container terminals. After the introduction and motivation, this paper provides an overview about the state of the art of synthetic data generators. Then, the conceptual model of the generator is presented. Furthermore, an exemplary visual validation of the generated output data is shown. The paper closes with a discussion and outlook on planned future developments of the software