Maritime transport in the Italian logistics market

In this paper, the role of Italian shipping firms in the logistic services market is defined in light of major changes under way. The first part analysed the structural characteristics of the supply and demand for logistic and transport services, in which a situation of substantial weakness emerged. This situation has favoured the large-scale entry of foreign operators on the Italian market which perceive Italy as a key node within the international scenario of transport and logistics. The second part of the paper focused on the analysis of individual areas in Italian shipping and their capacity to differentiate service by supplying value added logistic services beyond transport. The analysis showed a position of substantial marginality for Italian shipping, a position which gives rise to several doubts regarding its capacity to face the challenge of international competition successfully.     

The role of training in developing entrepreneurship: the case of shipping in Italy [1]

This paper examines the role of management training on entrepreneurial development paths of a sample of small and medium-sized Italian shipping enterprises. Starting with an analysis of evolutionary dynamics at the international level and highlighting the peculiarities of shipping in Italy, this paper reveals teh importance of firm-specific factors, compared with country-specific factors, in determining the competitiveness of shipping companies. In such enterprises the entrepreneur's role and his/her level of entrepreneurial culture play an important part in conditioning developing paths. On the basis of the results from an empirical survey, thee study in question suggests several implications for implementing policies aimed at increasing the level of entrepreneurial culture by means of selective, diversified interventions in management training so as to develop the factors required by the firm to recover competitiveness.     

Value creation in the port: opening the boundaries to the market

In the era of fierce competition among ports as elements of value chain systems, the opening of the boundaries to the market represents a crucial challenge that port authority has to cope with, in order to guarantee a lasting economic and social development of the port and its hinterland. We propose a theoretical framework to analyse value creation in the port and its hinterland through two core concepts: resource allocation and interaction. We illustrate such framework with the case of the port of Naples and, specifically, the contribution of the port authority and other port business operators to the value creation process of Garofalo, an export-oriented firm located in its hinterland. A discussion and suggestions for future research are provided in the last section.     

Sensitivity of the wheel–rail contact interactions and Dang Van Fatigue Index in the rail with respect to irregularities of the track geometry

This paper investigates the effects of the track geometry irregularities on the wheel–rail dynamic interactions and the rail fatigue initiation through the application of the Dang Van criterion, that supposes an elastic shakedown of the structure. The irregularities are modelled, using experimental data, as a stochastic field which is representative of the considered railway network. The tracks thus generated are introduced as the input of a railway dynamics software to characterise the stochastic contact patch and the parameters on which it depends: contact forces and wheelset–rail relative position. A variance-based global sensitivity analysis is performed on quantities of interest representative of the dynamic behaviour of the system, with respect to the stochastic geometry irregularities and for different curve radius classes and operating conditions. The estimation of the internal stresses and the fatigue index being more time-consuming than the dynamical simulations, the sensitivity analysis is performed through a metamodel, whose input parameters are the wheel–rail relative position and velocity. The coefficient of variation of the number of fatigue cycles, when the simulations are performed with random geometry irregularities, varies between 0.13 and 0.28. In a large radius curve, the most influent irregularity is the horizontal curvature, while, in a tight curve, the gauge becomes more important.     

Influence of the weather on mode choice in corridors with time-varying congestion: a mixed data study

Studies that link human behaviour to the influence of weather have historically been conducted in such fields as tourism, marketing and leisure. In most studies that jointly examine weather and the mode of transport, only open-air transportation has been considered (for example, bicycle, motorcycle or walking). This focus, together with the habitual use of data collected with automatic devices and a lack of studies that analyse this issue using stated preference data, are the main reasons motivating this paper. This paper aims to analyse the influence of weather and the density of traffic on the choice of transport mode. A case study is conducted in an access/egress corridor located in the city of Barcelona (Spain). Two data sources were used: revealed preference and stated preference data. Modelling techniques using mixed data enabled the stronger features from both data sources to be captured. Finally, we discuss how the selection of different alternative specific constants in models estimated using mixed data could generate unrealistic forecasting results if environmental changes are expected in the actual market.     

Activities,resources and inter-organizational relationships: key factors in port competitiveness

In the last decade, the port economics literature has given great emphasis to the Supply Chain Management approach as the new paradigm for the definition of port competitiveness. SCM supports the development of partnerships between the actors of the supply chain and considers the integration of activities and resources along business processes as source of competitive advantage. Nevertheless, the application of SCM approach to the port is particularly compiex given the traditional hostile relationships between port actors. In the effort to overcome such complexity, some authors have considered ports as Logistics Service Providers and interpreted their role within supply chains through the integrative practices undertaken by Global Players–mainly Shipping Companies and Terminal Operators–in the supply of integrated logistics services. Even tough these actors are crucial for the port competitiveness, they determine a passive role of port in the new competitive scenario. The definition of a potential and pro-active role of port in the supply chains is the objective of this paper that presents, through a literature review on SCM and port competitiveness, a new framework for port competitiveness. According to this framework, that is based on the value constellation concept value is generated by joint effort of port actors in the satisfaction of clients' needs, through the exploitation of different I mterdependencies (serial, pooled and reciprocal) between supply chains. In this context, Port Authority has a I fundamental role in identifying those resources–the so called critical assets–that encourage the development of inter-organisational relationships between port actors in the value generation process.     

Construction of a stochastic model of track geometry irregularities and validation through experimental measurements of dynamic loading

This paper describes the construction of a stochastic model of urban railway track geometry irregularities, based on experimental data. The considered irregularities are track gauge, superelevation, horizontal and vertical curvatures. They are modelled as random fields whose statistical properties are extracted from a large set of on-track measurements of the geometry of an urban railway network. About 300–1000 terms are used in the Karhunen–Loève/Polynomial Chaos expansions to represent the random fields with appropriate accuracy. The construction of the random fields is then validated by comparing on-track measurements of the contact forces and numerical dynamics simulations for different operational conditions (train velocity and car load) and horizontal layouts (alignment, curve). The dynamics simulations are performed both with and without randomly generated geometrical irregularities for the track. The power spectrum densities obtained from the dynamics simulations with the model of geometrical irregularities compare extremely well with those obtained from the experimental contact forces. Without irregularities, the spectrum is 10–50?dB too low.     

Maritime transport in the Italian logistics market

In this paper, the role of Italian shipping firms in the logistic services market is defined in light of major changes under way. The first part analysed the structural characteristics of the supply and demand for logistic and transport services, in which a situation of substantial weakness emerged. This situation has favoured the large-scale entry of foreign operators on the Italian market which perceive Italy as a key node within the international scenario of transport and logistics. The second part of the paper focused on the analysis of individual areas in Italian shipping and their capacity to differentiate service by supplying value added logistic services beyond transport. The analysis showed a position of substantial marginality for Italian shipping, a position which gives rise to several doubts regarding its capacity to face the challenge of international competition successfully.     

Classification of Beach Erosion Vulnerability on the Yucatan Coast

Beach erosion can have important socioeconomic and environmental consequences, particularly in tropical regions where tourism is a significant source of income. Although caused by natural processes, erosion is often aggravated by disorderly anthropogenic modification of the coast and extreme events. In Yucatan, Mexico, increasing urban development and deficient coastal management strategies as well as hurricanes have affected beach stability. This has highlighted the need for adequate coastal planning and policies that ensure the protection of key coastal ecosystems, such as beaches and sand dunes. To address this, a methodology to classify the coast according to its vulnerability is presented in this work. This methodology assumes that morphological features are indicators of beach evolution and the processes driving it and that these can be associated with different levels of vulnerability. The features considered are beach width, dune vegetation, anthropogenic pressure, and shoreline orientation, which were analyzed through aerial images and a multicriteria evaluation. It was observed that the most vulnerable areas are found near the most developed parts of the coast, where narrow beaches with little dune vegetation dominate. It is expected that this index will be of use to coastal planners and decision makers, particularly in the identification of critical zones.