The cost of tow delays is a serious problem in a waterway network. One way to reduce the delay cost is to increase capacity at waterway locks. Planners must determine how much additional capacity to provide at particular lock sites and when to implement the capacity expansion projects. Answers for such project sizing and timing problems are difficult to obtain analytically. The use of a new approach for optimizing through simulation, called simultaneous perturbation stochastic approximation (SPSA), is investigated. This approach, which seeks optimal values for all decision variables after each pair of simulation runs, is quite promising for optimizing large problems relatively fast. A small numerical example tests how this simulation and optimization algorithm may be used to optimize lock capacities and implementation times.
Optimization Through Simulation of Waterway Transportation Investments
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board
Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board ; 1620 , 1 ; 11-16
1998-01-01
Article (Journal)
Electronic Resource
English
Optimization Through Simulation of Waterway Transportation Investments
Online Contents | 1998
|Optimization Through Simulation of Waterway Transportation Investments
British Library Conference Proceedings | 1998
|Practical waterway transportation
Engineering Index Backfile | 1929
|Waterway versus rail transportation
Engineering Index Backfile | 1936