A shipping line stowage-planning procedure in the presence of hazardous containers

This work addresses the stowage-planning problem for containerships, known as the Master Bay Plan problem (MBPP), in the presence of hazardous containers. A novel procedure, based on the principles included in the International Maritime Dangerous Goods (IMDG) Code for stowing containers in liner services is presented. Further, shipping alliances are considered. Our aim is to assist the shipping line coordinator (SLC) to optimize the available space assigned to each alliance member. This is possible thanks to the proposed procedure that finds stowage solutions for ships with different structures, capacity and available sections for hazardous containers, and for companies having different stowage strategies. Our procedure can be implemented in a tool, able to verify the stowage constraints and the segregation rules in case of hazardous cargo. Two simple real-life multi-port stowage plans involving hazardous containers are presented and analysed to illustrate the proposed procedure.