A two-phase framework on the location of dry ports is presented at the new port study of PortEconomics co-director Theo Notteboom along with Dalian Maritime University (DMU) colleagues Zheng Chang and Jin Lu published in Transportation Planning & Technology.
The study aims to provide guidance for an optimal and reasonable dry port layout for the port of Dalian. which solves the selection of candidate inland cities and optimal dry port location choice respectively. Fuzzy C Means Clustering (FCM) is applied to select alternative cities in the vast hinterland of the seaport of Dalian, in view of identifying evaluation factors that affect the location selection decision, while a cost-minimization linear programming is proposed to choose the optimal location as well as capacity level among the candidate inland cities, with the aid of a Genetic Algorithm.
Download authors’ version @PortEconomics.
