Collaborative emergency berth scheduling based on decentralized decision and price mechanism

This paper aims to provide an applicable managerial solution to reduce the losses and impacts from an unexpected shutdown of a terminal by facilitating cooperation between two adjacent terminals that are managed by different operators. In view of the autonomy of different terminals, we focus on not only berth scheduling in the emergency situation, but also interest coordination between different terminals. We propose a novel mechanism based on price adjustment and transfer payment, which can induce the joint optimal scheduling of different terminals in an emergency situation through cooperation between terminals based on decentralized decision making. Extensive experiments show that the berth scheduling achieved under the proposed mechanism can significantly reduce the loss that results from the shutdown of a terminal and provide economic benefits to both terminals.