A tool for intermodal terminals simulation

Railway freight terminals play a key role within the multimodal transport and the transit time through these terminals represents one of the most relevant criticism in logistic chain. Therefore, a freight terminal it is a basic node in a transportation network, where thousand of daily decisions are taken to manage this sustained flow of containers. Predict the traffic evolution inside and near of terminal, it is important in order to manage the required flows and the available areas. One of the main cause of a system performances reduction is, in fact, the increase of the freight flow, in particular if it has not been available an appropriate increase of stacking capacity and management of the flows handled. Otherwise the consequences are the congestion of terminal flows and relative increase of transit time. In the research, a decision support system for the management of an intermodal container terminal is presented and a simulation tool it has been developed. In the last years the role of simulation becomes of paramount importance in managing and planning of such terminal activities. For this purpose it has been developed simulation models of the activities carried out inside an intermodal terminal. A discrete event simulation tool has been implemented with the aim of calculate the total transit time and to identify the bottle neck, in order to reduce the probability of system performances reduction by optimization of the unloading and handling operations of containers. The simulation has been applied to Darsena Tuscany Terminal in Livorno harbour. This work is the continue of the activities developed by the research team, taking into account the analysis of the functioning and modelling of intermodal terminals.