A hierarchical modeling paradigm for multi-fidelity simulation of mega container terminals

When designing a mega container terminal, simulation plays a key role in evaluating proposed configurations and strategies in terms of the targeted key performance indicators (KPIs). While there are currently several popular commercial software providing well-designed libraries and powerful graphic user interfaces, there are three major challenges: 1) the provided libraries are designed as a black box; only limited parameters and functions can be tuned, whereas other specific requirements such as simulating new equipment designs requires further support from the software developers; 2) many libraries are designed for evaluation at the operational level, i.e., tracking individual container movement. The scalability is limited for modelling a mega container terminal as it gets computationally expensive quickly; and 3) the libraries of simplified server-queue models are computationally affordable, but at the expense of details which gives important insights. To tackle these challenges, we proposed a hierarchical modelling paradigm that is suitable for simulation modelling of mega container terminals at different fidelity levels based on the O
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DES.Net framework. With an open and modular structure, every terminal component with various fidelity models can be “plugged-and-played”. This allows analysts from different backgrounds to conduct various types of analysis to meet their aims.