Building Agent-Based Models of Seaport Container Terminals

Agent-based models are increasingly being used to simulate and analyze various transportation problems, from traffic flow [15] to air traffic control [1]. One transportation in-dustry that has not received as much attention from the multi-agent systems community is seaport container termi-nals. It can be argued that the operations that take place at a container terminal are as complex as that of an airport. A seaport container terminal faces a myriad of operational challenges such as optimizing berth space, minimizing ship turnaround time, maximizing use of resources, and reducing wait time of drayage trucks. Due to environmental con-cerns, terminal operators and port planners are focusing on the problem of reducing the in-terminal wait time of drayage trucks. In this paper, we present our multiagent model of