Dimensioning of Container Terminals. Validation and Application Fields for a Stochastic Process

The maritime terminals design process includes a series of strategic decision involving the engagement of relevant amount of resources. In fact, operating conditions near the maximum capacity generate congestion and the related negative consequences on capacity and regularity. The authors developed different methods and models capable to support some of these key decisions. These methods allow at selecting the most suitable parameters to describe terminals, to determine dimensional and equipment characteristics and to verify the production of the terminals. For all them, various extended investigations on operated port terminals for data acquisition and homogenization are available: surveys on operated terminals, sampling criteria to ensure quality of derived design parameters, analysis and correlations to provide design and operational elements. Past and present surveys cover a sampling of 40 European terminals for the setup of the method in 1985, a sampling of 93 terminals within 49 European ports in 2008 and a geographical extension to Latin America and the Caribbean and an update of the method in 2021, specific object of the present paper.