A Hub Location Approach to Dry Port Facility Location Problem: A Case Study of Iran

With thriving the sea transport market and the increasing use of container, many containers tend to coastal port. The most controversial concerns of the port can be addressed as the lack of space for storage, high cost of land and lack of proper accessibility to origins and destinations due to traditional transportation of commodities. The best solution to tackle with the mentioned issues will be the concept of dry port as a hieratical transportation, with determined capacity and appropriate distances to port and origin-destination of Commodity. In this research, hieratical dry port location problem with hub location approach has been studied. The demand parameter is assumed as uncertain parameter in the presented model due to more adaption with real world situation. Uncertain parameter concept is considered in this paper to have a mathematical model with robust output under parameter variations. Robust optimization scenario-based model can produce feasible and optimal solutions under parameter variations. The obtained result from presented mathematical model for coastal-port location problem indicate to possibility of establishing 3 coastal-ports in Kerman, Fars and Khorasan-shomali. Also, the validity of the proposed model is presented. At last, results demonstrate to 31% outperformance of presented model and productivity of output robust model.