Modeling and solving the Tactical Berth Allocation Problem

In this paper we integrate at the tactical level two decision problems arising in container terminals: the berth allocation problem, which consists of assigning and scheduling incomingships to berthing positions, and the quay crane assignment problem, which assigns toincoming ships a certain quay crane profile (i.e. number of quay cranes per working shift).We present two formulations: a mixed integer quadratic program and a linearizationwhich reduces to a mixed integer linear program. The objective function aims, on theone hand, to maximize the total value of chosen quay crane profiles and, on the other hand,to minimize the housekeeping costs generated by transshipment flows between ships. Tosolve the problem we developed a heuristic algorithm which combines tabu search methodsand mathematical programming techniques. Computational results on instances basedon real data are presented and compared to those obtained through a commercial solver.