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The central problem treated in this thesis is that of designing and maintaining a service network in a liner container shipping context. Based on a unified description of the individual planning processes involved in the definition of the liner container service network design (SND) problem, a series of integrated models for the SND problem are developed in an iterative fashion. The first models that are proposed represent simple abstractions of the SND problem but gradually, additional dimensions are added to obtain rich models capable of capturing many of the requirements imposed on the liner container SND.

Two concrete problems, the liner container feeder service network design problem and the network transition problem are presented and analyzed in further detail with the purpose of providing tools to support the planning processes related to the design of the service network as well as the realization of a new design.