Design of a sea-borne system for fresh water transport

This paper describes a real problem faced by a major international shipping company regarding the design of a sea-borne system for fresh water transport from Turkey to Jordan in the Middle East. The fresh water was to be transported with high regularity at sea from Turkey to discharging buoy(s) by the coast in Israel, then in pipeline(s) from the buoy(s) to a tank terminal ashore and finally through pipeline from Israel to Jordan. The analysis aimed at answering questions regarding the needed number, capacity and speed of vessels, capacity and number of discharging buoys, design and capacity of pipelines and necessary capacity of the tank terminal. Another crucial question was how sensitive the chain was to failures of each component in the chain like the ships or loading/unloading buoys. To answer these questions, a simulation model was developed and simulations were run for a number of scenarios. Based on this analysis, the shipping company was able to reveal where bottlenecks arose when the capacities of the different parts in the transport chain were changed. Hence, the simulation analysis was used as a decision support in designing an optimal transport system.