Studying network design in container liner shipping

Container liner shipping, shipping network, network design, network structure, ship deployment. - This thesis studies network design in container liner shipping by concentrating on four research questions: - How were operational patterns deployed in route design? - How was container shipping network developed? - How efficient were fleet expansion and mega vessel deployment? - How do operational factors influence on route design? Question 1 analyses characteristics of shipping routes, a basis component of shipping operation. Question 2 deals with shipping network, which is a combination of various shipping routes. Question 3 takes account of the deployment of vessel fleet on the shipping system. The first three questions are carried out by conducting empirical researches to investigate strategies of shipping lines in network design. In the final question, we propose a non-linear programming model to optimise the design of a shipping route.