Authors: Agostino Bruzzone, Francesco Longo, Alessandro Chiurco, Felice Crupi, Marco Lanuzza, Alessio Luigi Emanuele, Curinga Maria Chiara, Molinaro Jessica
Flows management is a crucial aspect in harbor terminals and entails several issues such as high flows of containers to be handled during loading, unloading and housekeeping operations. It requires implementing proper allocation strategies in terms of resources so as well as to maximize productivity and ensure good performances. To this end, the proposed research work is meant to assess the potentials of Modeling & Simulation to support container terminal design and to come up with an easy to use tool able to support terminal managers in decision-making at various levels. Based on design requirements for a new container terminal scenario, the paper shows how the proposed simulation tool can be used to explore design possibilities including low and high operational levels and to detect terminal behavior during and after its start-up period.