Location Optimization for Freight Transport Hypernetworks

Abstract

Transport of goods from source to destination usually takes place on different layers of the logistics networks. In the state of the art, the network optimization problems for freight transportation (e.g., facility location problem) are mostly treated from the perspective of simple graph theory. For example, nodes and edges in the graph with certain features can be searched through a combinatorial search heuristics such that the node with the shortest cost to all other nodes is defined (see, e.g., P-Median Problem). Optimization of transportation networks from the perspective of graph theory is further complicated by the fact that transport networks are actually not only a simple graph, but rather the hypergraph (see also for multi-layer networks). That is, each transport network on certain modes (road, rail or maritime) can be represented as graph with additional multi-layer edges. In this context, the goal of this thesis was first to formulate an intermodal hypernetwork in the context of graph theory and secondly to perform the optimization (i.e. to make prediction for the optimal nodes/edges in intermodal hypernetwork) given a defined scenario.