OPTIMISING THE DESIGN OF SHORT SEA SHIPPING (SSS) OPERATION SYSTEM TO IMPROVE THE PERFORMANCE MULTIMODAL TRANSPORTATION NETWORK

This paper presents the design of the Short Sea Shipping (SSS) operating system particularly in selecting the most feasible combination of SSS operation system. The problem of choosing the best combination in this model is a combinatorial optimization problems. The developed mathematical model is the problem of bi-level programming, which the lower level problem is related to network assignment due to SSS operation, whereas the upper level problem is related to the selection of the optimum combination of SSS operating system. The optimization technique that will be used to choose the best combination is the Discrete Binary Particle Swarm Optimization (DBPSO) algorithm