Title: A tri-level mixed-integer program for the optimal fortification of a rail intermodal terminal network

Authors: Hassan Sarhadi; David M. Tulett; Manish Verma

Addresses: F.C. Manning School of Business, Acadia University, Wolfville, Canada ' Faculty of Business Administration, Memorial University, St. John's, Canada ' DeGroote School of Business, McMaster University, Hamilton, Canada

Abstract: Rail-truck intermodal transportation plays an important role in moving freight in North America, and hence the availability and appropriate functionality of the associated infrastructure is crucial. To this end, one of the strategies to mitigate (minimise) the adverse impacts from (intentional/random) disruption prescribes fortifying a set of rail intermodal terminals so that continuity in its service is ensured. In this paper, we re-visit the tri-level model to protect a given number of rail intermodal terminals such that the effect of worst-case disruptions is minimised. We propose a tabu search metaheuristic to solve the outer level problem, and then combine it with a decomposition-based technique to solve the entire model. The proposed methodology is tested on the problem instances introduced in an earlier work, and to comment on the computational efficiency vis-à-vis the existing techniques in the literature.

Keywords: intermodal transportation; mixed-integer program; fortification; tabu-search metaheuristic; decomposition.

DOI: 10.1504/IJOR.2022.121484

International Journal of Operational Research, 2022 Vol.43 No.1/2, pp.65 - 95

Received: 21 Dec 2019
Accepted: 07 Apr 2020
Published online: 16 Mar 2022 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article