The rolling horizon procedure on deterministic lockage co‐scheduling to the two dams of the Three Gorges Project

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose a rolling horizon procedure (RHP) to deal with the large‐scale and strongly NP‐hard problem on cooperative lockage‐timetables and service‐policies of the five locks in the Three Gorges Project. Design/methodology/approach RHP based approach is composed of a series of periodical short‐time sub‐optimizations instead of global optimization. Each of the sub‐optimizations is modeled by a mixed‐integer‐programming and solved by a branch and bound algorithm with terminal penalty. Findings The RHP method is found to be effective and efficient. The size of the rolling horizon is positively correlated to the total weighted area of ships. Research limitations/implications Precision of short‐time predictions is the main limitation. Originality/value This procedure promotes the navigation capacity of the Three Gorges Project and proposes a solution to the lockage‐scheduling problem of the Three Gorges Project.