A large-scale linear programming model for finding optimal container inspection strategies

✍ Scribed by E. Boros; L. Fedzhora; P. B. Kantor; K. Saeger; P. Stroud

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 874 KB
• Volume: 56
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0894-069X
• DOI: 10.1002/nav.20349

✦ Synopsis

Abstract

Cargo ships arriving at US ports are inspected for unauthorized materials. Because opening and manually inspecting every container is costly and time‐consuming, tests are applied to decide whether a container should be opened. By utilizing a polyhedral description of decision trees, we develop a large‐scale linear programming model for sequential container inspection that determines an optimal inspection strategy under various limitations, improving on earlier approaches in several ways: (a) we consider mixed strategies and multiple thresholds for each sensor, which provide more effective inspection strategies; (b) our model can accommodate realistic limitations (budget, sensor capacity, time limits, etc.), as well as multiple container types; (c) our model is computationally more tractable allowing us to solve cases that were prohibitive in preceding models, and making it possible to analyze the potential impact of new sensor technologies. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Naval Research Logistics 2009