Liner ship fleet deployment with uncertain demand

This paper points out that the deployment problem of the liner ship fleet with uncertain demand is different from other logistics problems with uncertain demand (e.g., truck transport and airlines) because container ships operate 24 h a day and 7 days a week. This difference is largely ignored in the literature. To address this problem, a multi-level optimization model is developed. In addition to liner ship fleet deployment, the model is applicable to other liner shipping decision problems, such as network design with uncertain demand, and to port operations planning problems, such as berth planning with uncertain ship arrival times.