Efficient Resource Planning of Intermodal Terminals under Uncertainty

This paper presents a decision support tool for the efficient resource planning and management of intermodal terminals under uncertainty, allowing to address the planning issue under imprecise or uncertain data (e.g., estimates on flows, resource utilization, operating conditions). The procedure consists of three steps: 1) the definition of a Timed Petri Net model of the terminal; 2) the computation of suitable performance indices to evaluate whether the current configuration is able to cope with a foreseen increase in the freight flows; 3) in the case of not satisfactory values of the indices at the previous step, the simulation of alternative planning solutions and the detection of the most efficient one via a cross-efficiency fuzzy Data Envelopment Analysis technique. In order to test its effectiveness, the procedure is applied to a real case study