Title:
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Development of decision making models for analysing a steaming speed of liner containerships under uncertainty
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The aims of this study are to 1) develop frameworks and models for analysing different
levels of steaming speed of containerships for the Asia-Europe route service and 2)
assist shipping companies in reducing fuel consumption, expenditure costs and journey
time of containerships by adjusting the service, technical and operational qualities, and
also business strategy when dealing with uncertainties in the container shipping sector.
Four phases of research study have been proposed. In the first phase, a model
incorporating Bayesian network is proposed for dealing with high levels of uncertainty
in data when analysing the financial performance of containerships for different levels
of steaming mode. In the second phase, a decision making model is developed to select
the most efficient steaming speed of containerships based on a number of chosen
criteria. The model combines two different techniques: 1) a technique for order
preference by similarity to ideal solution method and 2) a pair-wise comparison
technique. The steaming modes of a containership are ranked based on its relative
closeness to the ideal solution. In the third phase, a decision making model is proposed
for analysing the necessity of super slow steaming speed under uncertainty in data using
a hybrid approach of combining 1) a rule-based method, 2) a Bayesian reasoning
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method and 3) membership functions. In the final phase, a business selection model is
proposed for assisting shipping companies in selecting their business strategies using 1)
an evidential reasoning method, 2) a fuzzy-link based technique and 3) an analytical
hierarchy process approach. The ranking of all alternatives is determined based on their
overall assessment values incorporating a set of utility values.
To achieve the above alms, a number of decision making techniques have been
proposed with expert judgements used for analysing uncertainties in the data collection
process on the container shipping sector. The research outcomes produced can be used
by shipping companies to determine the suitable steaming mode of containerships in a
dynamic operational environment under uncertainty. The novelties of this research are
1) identify the need of the research, 2) development of the methodology which enable to
deal with uncertainty situation faced by shipping companies and 3) the developed
models are generic and can be applied in different circumstances.
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