In 2013, the concept of the ‘Silk Road Economic Belt and the 21st-Century Maritime Silk Road (Belt and Road)’ was initiated by the Chinese government, which involves Asian, European and African continents and their adjacent seas. Logistics plays a core role in such a large framework of economy and trade. In recent years, China, European Union, and Southeast Asia pay much attention to the design and development of the intermodal transportation network towards both economic and environmental efficiency. In this paper, we propose an empty container repositioning model in the intermodal transportation network of Belt and Road (B&R) Initiative by considering both standard and foldable containers. In this model, empty containers are repositioned from the inland of the original area, such as China, to other areas of B&R Initiative related countries and regions, such as European Union and Southeast Asia. We develop a mixed integer linear programming model to determine the optimal repositioning of empty containers via the intermodal transportation network. An Artificial Bee Colony algorithm is developed to solve large size problems in practice and numerical experiments are conducted to show the efficiency of our proposed algorithm. We provide managerial insights regarding the impact on the network performance of foldable containers transportation.

Greenhouse gas emissions in the shipping industry have been a major challenge in the sustainability of international transportation. This paper studied shore power management for river shipping, which has become increasingly popular in some international transport networks. We discussed stakeholders’ incentives and concerns regarding shore power and found that vessel owners play one of the dominant roles in the wide implementation of shore power. Then, a mathematical model is developed to show the advantages of shore power by combining it with an analysis of the optimal oil inventory plan for vessels. When the plan of the oil inventory on vessels is well designed, using shore power could be more beneficial than oil even if the shore power has a higher price than the latter because using shore power can provide the vessel with more options to improve the oil inventory plan by reducing oil consumption during berthing and the number of refueling. Sensitivity analyses are conducted to obtain a better understanding of the impact of the parameters on the performance of shore power. Our policy suggestions and findings can shed lights on how to make incentive policies for a wider and easier implementation of shore power under international shipping.