PhD in Coordinated planning in port call optimization

Abstract

We seek enthusiastic candidates that have an interest in and capabilities to perform research on coordinated planning in port call optimization. The expected benefit of port call optimization is a 10-25% reduction of costs and emissions. Ports have been taking many initiatives to improve port call processes. These initiatives require many port actors to actively work together. Despite the significant benefits and strong motivation, progress in this regard is still slow, mainly because of the diversity of interests in the port. Changes in regulations to enhance sustainability, like internalization of external costs (e.g., through emission trading schemes), will further complicate this alignment between actors.

The PhD student will become an active member of the large and diverse group of researchers at the SCM section. This group is one of the largest of its kind with more than 25 faculty members. It consistently ranks amongst the top-3 in Europe in terms of research output. Candidates are expected to contribute to the group's world-class research and teaching, and thereby to management science and management practice in logistics and supply chain management. Candidates are also expected to actively engage with peers and port stakeholders in the funded research project and create societal impact.

Keywords

Sea Port, Port Call optimization, Data Analytics, Operations Research, Game Theory

Topic

Overall funded research project PortCall.Zero: European seaports must achieve net zero emissions by 2050 and a 55% reduction by 2030 as mandated by the European Green Deal. With up to 80% of port emissions stemming from the port call process, new methods are urgently needed for coordinated decision-making and net-zero strategies. Current methods lack integrated planning, data sharing, and do not address uncertainties from shore power and new fuels. We will develop AI methods to manage these complexities and uncertainties, aiming to decarbonize the port call process. This will be demonstrated in Rotterdam and Moerdijk, making the Netherlands a global leader in sustainable port operations.

PhD project: The expected benefit of port call optimization is a 10-25% reduction of costs and emissions. Ports have been taking many initiatives to improve port call processes. These initiatives require many port actors to actively work together. Despite the significant benefits and strong motivation, progress in this regard is still slow, mainly because of the diversity of interests in the port. Changes in regulations to enhance sustainability, like internalization of external costs (e.g., through emission trading schemes), will further complicate this alignment between actors.

This project involves: Rob Zuidwijk, Ioannis Fragkos (RSM), Lorant Tavasszy, Neil Yorke-Smith (TUD)

Approach

This PhD project has two components: behavior and design. The first starts from the insight that a port is a complex ecosystem of different companies, i.e., service providers and users, each with their own business interests. Objectives (e.g., efficiency, sustainability, flexibility, and safety) and preferences differ between actors. Therefore, actors will respond differently to port call optimization measures. To understand their responses models can be developed using game theoretic approaches. A second concerns the understanding how objectives and preferences can be aligned with smartly designed, i.e. feasible and effective, port call optimization strategies. As actions will impact actors differently, shared decision rules and compensation mechanisms could be introduced to balance differences. On a broader scale, port call strategies will need to be aligned with new constraints of the ecosystem (e.g., energy system management). The results are expected to provide input to policy and investment decisions, as well as decision rules for planning. Publications will revolve around (descriptive and optimization) models, and (integral) tools that design adaptive win-win strategies to facilitate and accelerate the development of port call optimization initiatives.

Required profile

We welcome applicants with a quantitative orientation towards problem-solving, such as mathematical modelling (deterministic or stochastic), game theory, advanced statistical data analysis, or machine learning. Examples of educational backgrounds include Operations Research, Econometrics, Business Analytics, Applied Mathematics, or Computer Science. Applicants also have a keen interest interacting with port stakeholders to motivate and inspire their research and help create societal impact.

Expected output

The PhD project should result in a PhD thesis that meets the requirements of the university. In the overarching research project, the following specific outcomes of the PhD student are expected: (1) elicitation of stakeholder values and preferences; (2) simulation of federated agents with game theory and federated AI; (3) Incentive mechanism design strategies; and (4) incorporation of trends in digitalization, automation, and sustainable energy.

Cooperation

The PhD project will be a cooperative effort with peers and several port stakeholders, among which are colleagues from TU Delft, SmartPort, and several partners in the port community. PhD candidates are actively encouraged to undertake a research visit to one of the universities in our group’s network, such as MIT, INSEAD, University of Bologna, Georgia Tech, Northwestern University, and HEC Montreal.

Societal relevance

The overarching project PortCall.Zero supports ports to reach net zero emission goals as a collective in 2050. The project provides tools and insights to port managing bodies and industry to assess emission reduction strategies for the port as a whole and coordinate and control the pathway towards net zero port calls. Collaboration is critical to reach net zero targets. The project provides companies with a means to coordinate and share the net effect of all the operations in the port of all the companies, providing a collective benefit. PortCall.Zero turns the energy transition into a big opportunity for the port and the businesses on its premises. By building infrastructures in collaboration, costs and risks are lower. The competitive position of the port is maintained, with companies staying relevant throughout the transition.

Scientific relevance

The proposed research performs a novel environmental analysis for the collaborative port call process highlighting the different roles of involved parties. Research will focus on the use of game theory in the context of data analytics and optimization models, including the interaction of federated learning systems with mechanism design (Zhan et al., 2021). Specifically, this involves designing systems that although work with limited (federated) information sharing, they incentivize actors to share information that leads the system to a stable optimized equilibrium. Some relevant works include Wu et al. (2023), who use an action-based combinatorial multi-armed bandit approach, and Lu et al. (2024), who focus on social mobile networks and introduce a framework that attempts to enhance the generalizability of collaboratively trained models. The current project will leverage such advancements and investigate the design of algorithms that leverage publicly available data sources with confidential, user-generated information, used to train locally specific agents.

The challenging practical problem context for these algorithms is multi-stakeholder, multi-objective port call optimization, which must recognize stakeholder preferences in order ensure acceptance and adoption. The modelling will consider the approach of value-driven or decision-based engineering design, which was pioneered in the 1990’s (Hazelrigg, 1998) and has evolved into optimization approaches with tractable links with utility theory and game theory (Heukelum et al., 2023; Du and Jiao, 2023) including solutions for preference aggregation and existence of stakeholder networks.