Routing strategies in container shipping: a simulation approach for managing port-skipping

he maritime network plays a crucial role for all economic sectors, but there are various events (such as port congestion, geopolitical tensions, extreme weather, …) that can affect the scheduling of maritime services. This could cause a decrease in service quality (which impacts on the image of the shipping company) and an increase in costs. To try to reduce the effects of these situations, a shipping company can decide to adopt a port-skipping strategy. This paper aims to simulate the consequences of this behavior by analyzing the performance of port-skipping in different scenarios. The study proposes a simulation framework to model the movement of containers across the maritime network. The approach identifies the shortest path that allows a container to move between the origin and the destination in the case of port-skipping, and then, through a mesoscopic model, evaluates travel time, loading/unloading and transshipment costs as indicators. The analysis moves from the shipping lines susceptibility to disruption and, by modelling the shipping network as a graph (proposing the same approach used for public transport lines), analyses delays and consequences. The analysis offers an insight into freight management strategies, the performance achieved for each strategy are resumed through comparing costs, additional handling operations as well as delays for each origin/destination pair.