Ports operating in the same geographical range face significant competition among them. In such setting, less competitive ports may continually lose patronage of shippers （indigenous to them） to adjacent ones with b...Ports operating in the same geographical range face significant competition among them. In such setting, less competitive ports may continually lose patronage of shippers （indigenous to them） to adjacent ones with better attributes. The extent of and determinants of inter-port competition in the West Africa＇s coast are of interest to port administrators/operators who risk losing significant portion of their domestic generated cargo traffic to competing neighbouring ports. In this paper, we explore the question of what port specific attributes serve as competitive basis for West Africa＇s coastal ports operating in proximity to the other. Through a survey, users of these ports were asked to identify port specific attributes which they consider when deciding which port to use for shipments making. To enrich our empirical model, data collected from the survey were augmented with secondary data （on the identified attributes） obtained from the respective ports. Statistical evidence from data analysis suggests that ports operating in proximity in the West Africa＇s coast compete on the basis of attributes that minimise costs for port users, viz： ships＇ pre-berthiig time, ship turnround time, crane efficiency and availability of cargo spaces （proxied by frequency of ship calls）. Policy implications of the findings were discussed.展开更多
This paper studied a tactical liner shipping schedule design issue under sail and port time uncertainties,which is the determination of the planned arrival time at each port call as well as the punctuality rate and nu...This paper studied a tactical liner shipping schedule design issue under sail and port time uncertainties,which is the determination of the planned arrival time at each port call as well as the punctuality rate and number of assigned ship on the route.A number of studies have tried to introduce the operational speed adjustment measure into this tactical schedule design issue,to alleviate the discrepancies between designed schedule and maritime practice.On the one hand,weather conditions can lead to speed loss phenomenon of ships,which may result in the failure of ships’punctual arrivals.On the other hand,improving the ability of speed adjustment can decrease the late-arrival compensation,but increase the fuel consumption cost.Then,we formulated a machine learning-based liner shipping schedule design model aiming at above-mentioned two limitations on speed adjustment measure.And a machine learning-based approach has been designed,where the speed adjustment simulation,the neural network training and the reinforcement learning were included.Numerical experiments were conducted to validate our results and derive managerial insights,and then the applicability of machine learning method in shipping optimization issue has been confirmed.展开更多
文摘Ports operating in the same geographical range face significant competition among them. In such setting, less competitive ports may continually lose patronage of shippers （indigenous to them） to adjacent ones with better attributes. The extent of and determinants of inter-port competition in the West Africa＇s coast are of interest to port administrators/operators who risk losing significant portion of their domestic generated cargo traffic to competing neighbouring ports. In this paper, we explore the question of what port specific attributes serve as competitive basis for West Africa＇s coastal ports operating in proximity to the other. Through a survey, users of these ports were asked to identify port specific attributes which they consider when deciding which port to use for shipments making. To enrich our empirical model, data collected from the survey were augmented with secondary data （on the identified attributes） obtained from the respective ports. Statistical evidence from data analysis suggests that ports operating in proximity in the West Africa＇s coast compete on the basis of attributes that minimise costs for port users, viz： ships＇ pre-berthiig time, ship turnround time, crane efficiency and availability of cargo spaces （proxied by frequency of ship calls）. Policy implications of the findings were discussed.
基金the National Natural Science Foundation of China(Nos.71572022 and 61473053)the National Social Science Foundation of China(No.18VHQ005)。
文摘This paper studied a tactical liner shipping schedule design issue under sail and port time uncertainties,which is the determination of the planned arrival time at each port call as well as the punctuality rate and number of assigned ship on the route.A number of studies have tried to introduce the operational speed adjustment measure into this tactical schedule design issue,to alleviate the discrepancies between designed schedule and maritime practice.On the one hand,weather conditions can lead to speed loss phenomenon of ships,which may result in the failure of ships’punctual arrivals.On the other hand,improving the ability of speed adjustment can decrease the late-arrival compensation,but increase the fuel consumption cost.Then,we formulated a machine learning-based liner shipping schedule design model aiming at above-mentioned two limitations on speed adjustment measure.And a machine learning-based approach has been designed,where the speed adjustment simulation,the neural network training and the reinforcement learning were included.Numerical experiments were conducted to validate our results and derive managerial insights,and then the applicability of machine learning method in shipping optimization issue has been confirmed.
