3D approach needs careful consideration

The University of Southampton’s Professor Ajit Shenoi says: “Each port will have to examine for itself what the best 3D modelling methods/packages there are to align with its requirements. There is no panacea or cure all and much depends upon how much investment there is up front and which problems they wish to solve.

“If you don’t use 3D modeling in port design, you’re heavily reliant on current methods involving experiential and empirical methods. However, with rapidly advancing technology we’re undergoing step changes. Empirical wisdom is fine if you’re going down a slope that is predictable. But when you’ve got new technology, you’ve got step changes so the previous history and experiences are not there to predict what might go wrong. When you have new technology coming this kind of modelling becomes absolutely essential.”

Yu Zhang (Alan), simulation development lead and port planner at Moffatt & Nichol, says that when considering successful 3D simulation modelling, the right tool, and the right people with the right knowledge must be carefully selected. The questions of ‘when’ and ‘what’ to simulate should be answered at the beginning.

“Simulation modelling needs to be carefully designed to include details, but only the necessary details, to answer the particular questions at hand to save time and efforts, as well as to minimise the possibility of introducing bugs or unexpected issues by including unnecessary detail. This is very true in the port environment.

“For example, container terminals are complicated systems and ’doing simulation for the sake of simulation’ without carefully defining the problem, assumptions and logics makes it very likely that you’ll end up with a ’garbage in garbage out’ situation.”