A recursive model for static empty container allocation

Backlogged empty containers have gradually turned into a serious burden to shipping networks. Empty container allocation has become an urgent settlement issue for the container shipping industry on a global scale. Therefore, this paper proposes an improved immune algorithm based recursive model for optimizing static empty container allocation which integrates with the global maritime container shipping network. This model minimizes the operating and capital costs during container shipping considering 0-1 mixed-integer programming. So an immune algorithm procedure based on a special two- dimensional chromosome encoding is proposed. Finally, computational experiments are performed to optimize a 10-port static empty container shipping system. The results indicate that the proposed recursive model for static empty container allocation is effective in making an optimal strategy for empty container allocation.