A TOPSIS method for vehicle route selection in seaports — A real case analysis of a container terminal in North West Europe

This paper studies the feasibility of using the Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) method to identify the optimal travel routes of Intelligent Autonomous Vehicles (IAVs) from a set (i.e. database) of potential routes of vehicles in a container terminal. It allows routes to be arranged in a ranked list to provide a real time on-demand response to a routing request by the system´s controller. The study sets out the desirability of a system that is capable of reacting quickly to changes in circumstance, necessary in a dynamic real-life scenario. The concept offered by the proposed system distinguishes between the traditional role of a human operator and newer fully automated models in vehicle management. The evaluations and analyses in this study demonstrate that the construction of a database-style management system enables a reliable IAV operation in small-scale container ports with standard logical yard layouts.