Optimum Allocation and Size of Seaports

The amount of general cargo that is transported through public wharves in a port is not necessarily constant for a certain point of time; it will change depending on the relative location of the port to other ports in a country. In this paper, a method to determine the optimum allocation and size of ports in a country is proposed from a national economic point of view. The total cost spent in transporting general cargo consists of two kinds of costs; i.e., the total inland transportation cost and the total port cost. The former cost is a linear function of the amount of cargo transported; while the latter cost is a nonlinear function and is not easy to treat. Consequently, the total port cost is approximated by a piecewise linear function. Thus, the application of the separable programming technique to this type of allocation problem has proved successful. The optimum berth planning of ports in a country can be executed efficiently and easily with the aid of the procedures herein developed.