Long-term planning of a container terminal under demand uncertainty and economies of scale

governments of many developing countries are presently granting concessions to private organizations to operate container terminals. a key element in this process is the technical and economic evaluation of the project. in practice, the demand levels over time are volatile. the first part of the paper deals with a capacity expansion problem with stochastic demand. next, an optimization model employs a dynamic programming routine to find the best epochs to install new berths. ship waiting times are computed with queuing models and are introduced into the main model as upper restrictions based on international practice. finally, a real options analysis is performed with the objective of evaluating the effects of an eventual abandonment of the project at a pre-defined time horizon. the model is then applied to the container terminal of the port of rio grande, brazil.