Optimization strategies for resilient freight transport and sustainability

A resilient system is one that is able to sustain disruptions by been able to operate close to the optimum or acceptable sub optimum performance by reconfiguring itself to accommodate the disruptions. Resiliency is an important component of sustainability, as a non-resilient system will not be sustainable in the long term. The freight transportation chain that goes through ports is very susceptible to disruptions and poses important issues related to its resiliency. The purpose of this paper is to use optimization models to address freight chain disruption problems and evaluate their resiliency. Our approach is based on reconfiguration to include other resources and routes which in the absence of disruption were not cost effective, and therefore under normal conditions were not feasible choices. Using other resources and alternative routes depends on location, severity, and duration of disruption. Our approach identifies which of these resources and routes are best choices for the kind of disruption that took place. We use a simulation case study that focuses on disruption scenarios in the two major sea ports on the south west coast of the United States. The computational results demonstrate the effectiveness of the developed algorithm in mitigating the impact of freight chain disruption.