Identifying Suitable Transshipment Points for a Decentralized Waterborne Container Transportation Network

Developing a new waterborne logistics service based on a possibly higher number of transshipment points, smaller barges, and different transshipment techniques as a competitive alternative to existing road-borne transportation services requires an intelligent design of the network. The identification of such (not fully known) potential decentralized transshipment points poses a challenge which, however, is hardly covered in research literature. Mostly, the underlying network with the possible nodes and arcs are already known when starting to develop a new transportation service. It is of high relevance because the economic viability of a logistics concept can be influenced by adding or dropping the number of transshipment points. The present paper presents the use case from the West German canal system where all points of interest have been recorded in a database. With the help of the collected data, various examinations and comparisons can be conducted before eventually selecting a subset of relevant points of interest and examine different scenarios. The presented methodology acts as a blueprint and can be extended to further types of points of interest and other geographical areas.