Youfang Huang（黄有方）, Mitsuo Gen, Kap Hwan Kim, ChengJi Liang（梁承姬）, Lin Lin
《Computers & Industrial Engineering》
December 2015, Volume 89, pp 1–1
The field of maritime logistics is a rapidly growing research area as globalization of trade expands. Because of the dramatic increase in container traffic all over the world, ports have become one of the most critical bottlenecks in global transportation networks. In order to improve the situation, a great deal of research has been directed to the design and operational issues of container transportation during the last decade. Operations research, artificial intelligence, statistical analysis, and computer science have been applied to solve the practical problems in maritime transportation. In addition, environmental changes and technical improvements in practices brought out new challenging issues such as the automation, the low carbon emission, and IT applications. This special issue aims at addressing these interesting research issues in field of maritime logistics and transportation intelligence.
A main source of the articles in this special issue were selected papers from those presented at the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Manufacturing and Logistics Systems (IML2013), which was held in Shanghai, China, February 27th to March 2nd, 2013. Shanghai has been one of the largest port cities in Northeastern Asia and currently has the largest volume of container throughput in the world. With this background of the conference site, during IML2013, many papers related to intelligent logistics systems and global maritime transportation have been presented. However, this special issue was also open to other papers not presented at IML2013.
In this special issue, we have received 36 manuscripts and among them carefully selected 21 papers based on rigorous reviews. Eight papers, which occupied the largest portion in the special issue, discussed about the efficient operation of port and container terminals. Four papers proposed new approaches to network design and operation issues for maritime transportation, and nine papers address other logistics issues and transportation intelligence.
This special issue has greatly benefited from the cooperation among the authors, reviewers, and editors. We would like to express deeply our sincere thanks to Shanghai Maritime University for organizing IML2013 Conference and all authors for their contributions, which made this special issue possible.