Optimal Co-evolutionary Strategies for the Competitive Maritime Network Design Problem

Abstract

The current paper is focusing into the less well-defined transportation networks as those that are formed by the integration (combination) of alternative transportation means for servicing freight movements and the special inter-dependencies that are developed by this integration. Here the market of maritime facilities is modelled as an n-person non-cooperative game among port authorities who control the attractiveness of their terminal facilities. By taking the above interdependencies into consideration, optimal decisions of port authorities are obtained by extending the classical single leader-multiple followers Stackelberg game-theoretic formulation of the Network Design Problem (NDP) to its complete form of multiple leaders-multiple followers Competitive NDP (CNDP). The estimation of the equilibrium point of the above formulation is made by incorporating a novel evolutionary game-theoretic genetic operator into a hybrid Genetic Algorithm. The results from the application of the proposed framework into a realistic part of the East Mediterranean freight network show the potential of the method to support decisions of port authorities concerning future infrastructure investments.