Simulated Annealing Algorithm for Solving the Hazardous Container Stacking Problem in Tripoli-Lebanon seaport

A container terminal is a complex system consisting of a group of interrelated logistics operations. Many operations take place in the storage area, therefore, they must comply with rules and laws to ensure the safety of the port and prevent risks, especially for the storage of hazardous containers. The main objective of this paper is to maximize the distance between incoming hazardous containers after finding the best locations in a storage yard to avoid any reaction between them and to ensure good places for inflammable liquid goods in order to prevent leakage from any accident may occurs in any moment. An optimization model with a mixed integer linear program is proposed to solve the problem of placing dangerous containers. This problem is NP-Hard and cannot be solved by the Gurobi solver due to its complexity. Five types of hazardous containers are considered and tested by an optimization heuristic method on the terminal port. Experimental tested results show that simulated annealing algorithm (SA) shows an efficient results compared to the results given by Gurobi.