This thesis focuses on container freight intermodal transportation systems that are operated in a hinterland of a port, where hinterland is usually referred to the area that connects a port with its inland clients. Sharypova’s research is particularly focused on intermodal transportation systems based on inland waterways combined with trucks. However, methods proposed in this thesis can be generalized to intermodal transportation systems based on short-sea shipping and coastline navigation systems.

In her thesis, Sharypova proposes a new formulation for problems of designing intermodal transportation networks. This problem formulation captures the major characteristics of intermodal transportation systems: bundling of containerised freight, possible transshipment of containerised freight, and scheduling of transportation services.  In academic terms, this problem boils down to continuous- time formulation for multi-vehicle multi-commodity scheduled service network design (SSND) problem with design-balance and synchronisation constraints. Such problem formulations are extremely hard to solve with state-of-the-art solvers. Therefore, efficient meta-heuristics are developed based on the problem structure which provides good quality solutions within relatively short times.