The visual effects of port redevelopment alternatives

Abstract

In the early 1970s, Seattle Piers 90/91 were declared surplus federal property by the GSA. These obsolescent half‐mile‐long piers and their adjacent uplands were purchased by the Port of Seattle for redevelopment. This urban waterfront site of almost 200 acres presents the Port of Seattle with a number of severe planning problems. While it is the last large deep‐water site on Elliott Bay, it is also in a very sensitive location, since it is overlooked on two sides by vocal residential communities with a history of active intervention in development projects on visual and other environmental grounds.

At Piers 90/91, public concerns over the visual effects of port redevelopment include:

1. nuisance effects of night‐operations lighting on adjacent hillside residences;

2. nighttime obstruction of distant views due to increased foreground illumination;

3. day and night view obstruction by tall structures such as container‐handling cranes;

4. alteration of the character of both day and nighttime views by new port facilities.

As part of a program to study the effects of alternative redevelopment strategies for Piers 90/91, the Port has undertaken a through examination of the visual effects of different uses, their visual appropriateness, and the ways by which adverse visual effects can be mitigated. The results were incorporated into an environmental impact statement which documented compliance with the Seattle Shoreline Master Program and with view protection and glare provisions of the City's S.E.P.A. guidelines.

A systematic Visual Resource Management (VRM) approach was successfully employed on this coastal zone project. Major elements included visibility mapping, key view selection, analysis of existing visual character, simulation of alternatives, assessment of relative visual compatibility, and determination of effective mitigation measures. Community involvement has also been a critical element in this approach to assessing and managing the visual effects of redevelopment in a major urban port.     

Testing port choice models using physical and monetary data: a comparative case study for the Spanish container trades

ABSTRACT

Transport costs are useful explanatory variables in port choice research. Nevertheless, the availability of such information usually poses a problem. Thus, the formulation of an alternative approach, to be used as a proxy of these variables, would be desirable. The objective of this study is to improve the analysis of container port choice using logit models by adopting physical non-monetary indicators based on maritime distance and ship size. The statistical tests of logit models on port choice using these new variables are compared with the result of using cost variables for the same data set of choice positions. The statistical outcome is good and allows us to present this new approach as a contribution to the literature on port choice modeling.     

Comparative analysis of port competency requirements in Vietnam and Korea

ABSTRACT

Much research has been conducted recently on the changing role of ports in the context of international logistics and supply chain management focusing on issues such as port efficiency and competitiveness. However, little research has been found on the critical aspect that contributes to making a port efficient and effective, especially, in the new era: the port human capital. As seaports play a critical role in the supply chain, it is thus important that the port personnel possess necessary competencies to contribute to port efficiency and turn the port into an effective supply chain partner. In this paper, this research issue is explored through a conceptual model of competencies and validated empirically by a survey with port executives in Vietnam and Korea. As a result, important managerial insights are drawn to the design and implementation of human resource development policy for ports.     

Port e-Transformation,customer satisfaction and competitiveness

ABSTRACT

e-Transformation in container ports means port organization-wide innovative transformation encompassing internal and external value chains based on information and communication technology. There is a considerable theoretical literature on the impact of e-Transformation on business performance, but there is very little empirical study on its effectiveness in ports. The objective of this paper is to empirically investigate how e-Transformation in container port management can influence customer satisfaction and port competitiveness. The findings reveal that e-Transformation in container ports can affect customer satisfaction and port competitiveness through e-Workplace, customer relationship management and security, implying that container ports should make every effort to focus on e-transformation in these critical areas. Due to limited empirical studies in this area, the findings have provided an empirical support for the importance of e-Transformation in container terminal management and shed more light on how e-Transformation can affect customer satisfaction and port competitiveness.     

Influential factors in the design of port infrastructure tariffs

ABSTRACT

The main aim of this article is to examine the factors influential to the practical process of port infrastructure tariff design. The analysis is based on the survey data of 67 seaports representing the Australasian, East Asian, European, North American and South American regions. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was first carried out to identify the factors influential to the selection of the infrastructure tariff design model. Subsequently, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to confirm the relationship between the variables. The findings showed that demand, knowledge about pricing theories, the dynamics of port and shipping sectors (including competition and ship size), pricing objectives and port cost consideration are influential factors in infrastructure tariff design. Most ports use a mix of pricing approaches including price discrimination, cost-based pricing and market-based pricing. Ports are aware of the basic pricing approaches but have limited knowledge of their application. Based on the results of analysis, policy implications for port management in designing port infrastructure tariffs, limitations and recommendations for future research are discussed.     

The political economy of ports in the United States and Great Britain

Abstract

This is an exploration of the political economy of ports in the United States and Great Britain. A number of technical, economic, and political issues concerning ports are examined. Particular attention is paid to the institutional evolution of ports from private to public ownership, and its consequences for port efficiency. The paper concludes with a set of recommendations designed to reverse the trend toward port nationalization in both countries.     

Do port security quality and service quality influence customer satisfaction and loyalty?

ABSTRACT

This study uses Kaohsiung Port as a case study to evaluate the relationships between port security quality, port service quality, customer satisfaction, and customer loyalty. For this purpose, a survey was conducted with shipping companies and freight forwarders in Taiwan. The results indicate that port security quality has a direct and positive impact on both port service quality and customer satisfaction; port service quality has a direct and positive impact on both customer satisfaction and customer loyalty; and customer satisfaction has a direct and positive impact on customer loyalty. However, the impact from port service quality is more significant than that of port security quality. Accordingly, this study suggests that Kaohsiung Port should concentrate on improving its service quality in order to enhance customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.     

Connectivity analysis of the global shipping network by eigenvalue decomposition

ABSTRACT

Maritime shipping necessitates flexible and cost-effective port access worldwide through the global shipping network. This paper presents an efficient method to identify major port communities, and analyses the network connectivity of the global shipping network based on community structure. The global shipping network is represented by a signless Laplacian matrix which can be decomposed to generate its eigenvectors and corresponding eigenvalues. The largest gaps between the eigenvalues were then used to determine the optimal number of communities within the network. The eigenvalue decomposition method offers the advantage of detecting port communities without relying on a priori assumption about the number of communities and the size of each community. By applying this method to a dataset collected from seven world leading liner shipping companies, we found that the ports are clustered into three communities in the global container shipping network, which is consistent with the major container trade routes. The sparse linkages between port communities indicate where access is relatively poor.     

Managing port-related supply chain disruptions (PSCDs): a management model and empirical evidence

ABSTRACT

In the contemporary port business environment, port resilience is of paramount importance for supply chain continuity. A result of the increased integration of ports into supply chains is ports’ potential to supply chain disruptions. This paper introduces a PSCD management model that incorporates the application of risk management, business continuity management, and quality management theories with the purpose of increasing port resilience such that supply chain continuity is enhanced. To validate this model, primary data were collected from samples of port operators and port authorities and analyzed using structural equation modeling with AMOS 22.0. The results indicate that managing PSCD using the management model contributes positively to the identification of internal and external opportunities and through that to port’s resilience of internal operations. This, in turn, positively influences port’s financial health and market reputation. The management model has several managerial and academic implications as it offers meaningful insights on policy development as well as theory building.     

Influence of local government on port investment: implications of China’s decentralized port governance system

ABSTRACT

The pursuit of better performance by the local government can influence the investment decision-making related to port expansion. This paper compares the ceilings at which the port enterprise and the local government would stop making investments. To achieve this, the benefits to the port enterprise and the local government are measured over a given time period. An empirical study investigating how a port would respond if a rival port uses a type of capacity investment strategy is conducted for two major ports in Liaoning. The time at which the local government and the port enterprise would stop making investments and the final equilibrium are developed using the data from 2010. From the empirical results, it was found that investment in port capacity contributes greatly to the local government’s performance. Meanwhile, different investment ceilings are discovered for the port enterprise and the local government. This research is meaningful for discussing the institutional relationship between the local government and the port enterprise in China’s current decentralized port governance system.

This paper is a revised and expanded version of a paper entitled ‘Port expansion mechanism in the context of political achievement of local government: a special phenomenon in China’ presented at International Association of Maritime Economists 2012 Taipei Conference during 5th September –8th September.     

Eilat: Multiple conflicts in an inherently uncertain environment

Abstract

Ports are often at the center of conflicts regarding the use of coastal areas and their management. Yet, it is often impossible to forecast the future development patterns of a port due to its dependence on shifting international relations and markets. Such inherent uncertainty complicates the management of coastal areas affected by the port. This article looks at how such a case is being addressed in Eilat, Israel's Red Sea port.

The development of Eilat's port has been a function of the changing geopolitical situation in the Middle East. At the same time it is in the center of a number of local conflicts involving the management and planning of Israel's Red Sea coast. Evaluation of the two alternatives proposed to address these conflicts is hampered by the inherent uncertainty regarding the port's growth patterns. The use of robust evaluation techniques is suggested as one way to address inherent uncertainties.     

Transshipment hub port selection for shipping carriers in a dual hub-port system

ABSTRACT

This paper investigates the factors affecting transshipment (T/S) hub port selection by a feeder port and helps shipping carriers make a decision about T/S hub port selection in a dual hub-port system. By employing established evaluation factors, a case study is conducted to weigh the priority of factors and to select an alternative T/S hub port, such as between the Shanghai and Ningbo ports from the Nanjing feeder port in the Yangtze River delta (YRD). A combined multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) framework utilizing the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and the consistent fuzzy preference relations (CFPR) method is employed to both reduce the number of pairwise comparisons by AHP and to obtain experts’ knowledge in the decision-making process. The result indicates that the cost, availability of hub port’s space allocation, and the connectivity between feeder port and hub port are crucial factors for T/S hub port selection by shipping carriers. In the case study, Shanghai is selected as the T/S hub port from the Nanjing feeder port. Nevertheless, Ningbo port has the advantage of cost, and if the relationship with feeder port can be improved, Ningbo port would be preferred over Shanghai as a T/S hub port for shipping carriers in a dual hub-port system.     

Examining stakeholder participation and conflicts associated with large scale infrastructure projects: the case of Tema port expansion project,Ghana

ABSTRACT

Balancing economic activities with socio-environmental considerations has become a global standard for the construction of large scale infrastructure projects, including ports. In this discourse, stakeholder participation and environmental and social impact assessment (ESIA) have been stressed as important tools that can help port managers to co-create values, avoid conflicts and promote inclusive growth. Drawing on qualitative research tools and stakeholder theory, this paper explores whether and to what extent local stakeholders’ inclusion has substantial influence on addressing their socio-cultural concerns and interest. This is illustrated with a case study of an ongoing port expansion project at Ghana’s largest port of Tema. The findings suggest that although the port authority conducted an ESIA and engaged local stakeholders as part of the planning process, this did not translate into preventing the loss of valuable cultural resources of the local communities. The port authority did not place ‘value’ on cultural resources of the local communities that cannot be expressed in monetary terms. Further, lack of good faith engagement with local stakeholders led to conflicts in some cases that triggered a court action and delays. The paper concludes that stakeholder participation if not applied well, can become a ‘post-political’ tool.     

Which terminals should expand investment: a perspective of internal non-cooperative competition in a port?

ABSTRACT

With the increasing container cargo throughput and the arising of port congestion, container ports start to choose the investment expansion strategy to increase the port efficiency and then to figure out the problem of port congestion. To analyze this strategy, we formulate a non-cooperative game model for a two-terminals-one-port system, and derive the optimal equilibrium outcomes of the investment expansion strategy and investment constant strategy. In the game, we find that when the investment parameter of expansion strategy and impact of handling efficiency on demand changes, both pure-strategy Nash equilibrium and mixed-strategy Nash equilibrium exist, and two terminals are more likely to choose the investment expansion strategy in most cases. Numerical simulation is applied to explore the equilibrium strategy under different circumstance.     

Smaller ports’ evolution towards catalysing sustainable hinterland development

ABSTRACT

From simple organizations as gateways for goods and passengers, ports have evolved and transformed into complex organizational systems with multiple functions. Besides providing cargo, logistics, and other kinds of services to its customers, modern ports engage in the development of their hinterlands. Sustainability, evolving from environmental actions over the years, has become the core of many modern ports’ approach towards hinterland development and port competitiveness. While the literature is concerned with and presents examples of large ports implementing sustainability initiatives, the literature is scarce on smaller ports. This article addresses this gap by exploring qualitatively the case of the Port of Aalborg, a medium-sized port in Denmark, and its evolution towards using sustainability for port and hinterland development. The research focuses on the actions behind environmental development at the port. Its evolution is mapped and explored using the analytical framework developed based on the (larger) ports’ development and their roles. The findings from the Port of Aalborg case exemplify how smaller ports can evolve to drive the sustainable development of their hinterlands and contribute to a better understanding of this kind of port.     

Examining sustainability performance at ports: port managers’ perspectives on developing sustainable supply chains

ABSTRACT

This research examined the effects of sustainable supply chain management (i.e. internal sustainable development and external sustainable collaboration) on sustainability performance in the port context. Structural equation modeling was employed in this study using survey data collected from 135 respondents holding the position of supervisor or above in three major international port authorities in Taiwan (i.e. Keelung, Taichung, and Kaohsiung). Results indicated that external sustainable collaboration is positively associated with internal sustainable management, and internal sustainable management positively influences sustainability performance. This research also found that internal sustainable management mediates the effects of external sustainable collaboration on sustainability performance. The implication of the findings for port decision-makers, authorities, managers, and sustainable development are discussed.     

An application of BBNs on the integrated energy efficiency of ship–port interface: a dry bulk shipping case

ABSTRACT

A considerable amount of energy is consumed with every completed ship voyage and each port operation performed. Recent regulative approaches by the IMO are to enforce the shipping industry to become more energy efficient and sustainable. There is a growing amount of literature on the energy efficiency management of ships and ports. However, there is still inadequate research effort on the ship–port interface in order to obtain an Integrated Energy Efficiency framework for marine transport operations. In this research, a theoretical concept is generated to measure holistic energy efficiency in shipping operations. The main purpose of this paper is to identify nodes of the integrated ship-port energy efficiency framework and develop a probabilistic approach, which can help to increase energy efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions for shipping companies. This research generates an application of BBNs on ship–port interface regarding the integrated operational energy efficiency interactions by aiming to optimise holistic operational energy efficiency and CO2 emissions. The outcomes suggest that it would be possible to increase the probability of a more energy efficient and sustainable marine transport operation by integrating the influences of port and ship operation performances and their elements on the related route planning and slow steaming decision-making.     

A three-dimensional risk management model of port logistics for hazardous goods

ABSTRACT

Ports are the distribution centers of hazardous goods in the global transportation system. Once hazardous goods accidents occur in ports, they may cause catastrophic losses to humans and the environment. This research investigates the port logistics risks of hazardous goods and provides an overview of port logistics regarding hazardous goods risks. With this investigation, we conducted a detailed analysis of the underlying causes of the port logistics accidents related to hazardous goods. To manage these risks, this article proposes a three-dimensional risk management model that includes human, governance and goods and provides a risk level identification framework for port hazardous goods logistics. Applying the three-dimensional risk management model, we use the Tianjin port explosion as a case study. Finally, we provide several potential preventative measures to prevent such accidents. The findings of this article contribute to the implementation and monitoring of port strategies that will allow for more sustainable and secure development.     

Air pollution impact of maritime shipping operations in the port of Houston

Abstract

Major air pollutants from maritime shipping operations are sulfur oxides, nitrogen oxides, and particulate matter emissions from combustion of fuel oil during cruise, berth, and start‐up modes. Sulfur oxides emissions are substantial from steamships burning high‐sulfur residual fuel oil, where shipping contributes 66 percent of the total sulfur dioxide emissions from transportation sources, and almost 3 percent of the total for Harris county, Texas. Nitrogen oxides emissions are significant during cruise conditions for both steamships and motor ships, while particulate emissions are substantial during start‐up and tube cleaning.

Significant marine air pollutant emission sources are found in busy harbor areas such as the Houston Ship Channel. Offshore terminals for unloading large tankers may result in emissions of 10 to 20 tons of sulfur oxides daily per ship, and 3 to 5 tons of nitrogen oxides daily per ship during pumping operations. Trace‐metal constituents present in the oil may catalyze sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide oxidation to their respective sulfate and nitrate aerosols in the humid Texas Gulf Coast atmospheres to aggravate photochemical air pollution problems once the air masses reach industrial and populated urban areas on land. Onshore sulfur dioxide and particulate‐matter emission controls may be necessary for some large ships in port to minimize potential impact on coastal zone air quality.     

Next generation mega container ports: implications of traffic composition on sea space demand

ABSTRACT

Demand for sea space brought about by increasing container-shipping traffic has important implications on how this space is managed and used. This is particularly important given the long-term nature, high-asset specificity, high- opportunity cost of investment, and significant economic impact of container port activity on a locality. The challenge is especially pressing for ports, which are facing constraints in seaside capacity where container traffic also has to co-exist with the needs of other types of ship traffic. This challenge is likely be multiplied for next generation container ports, which are expected to handle even larger traffic volumes. These ports are also likely to face competing sea space demands from other economic and social activities especially when they are concurrently major confluences of trade, logistics, and urban populations. This is the first research to investigate in detail the impact and importance of investigating sea space requirements from the perspective of cargo traffic composition and ship capacity. Results show that transshipment containers can generate much higher demand for sea space due to the higher volume of shipping capacity that accompanies such traffic. Sustainability issues and managerial and policy implications pertaining to the development of next generation container ports are provided.