Adolf K.Y. Ng

Port Governance Reforms in Diversified Institutional Frameworks: Generic Solutions, Implementation Asymmetries

Bringing in neo-institutional perspectives, this paper investigates the recent corporatisation process of three seaports in Asia and Europe. We focus on whether the newly established seaport governance structures follow a path largely affected by the local/national institutional frameworks and the political traditions in place. Findings confirm that path-dependent decisions largely preserve the institutional characteristics of local/national systems, resulting in implementation asymmetries when different countries seek generic governance solutions.

Centrality and vulnerability in liner shipping networks: revisiting the Northeast Asian port hierarchy

This article is essentially an empirical investigation in the network analysis of inter-port traffic flows. Based on a database of vessel movements, it applies conventional techniques of network analysis to the graph of Northeast Asian liner networks in 1996 and 2006. Such an approach proves particularly helpful for analyzing the changing position of major hub ports and for revealing their respective tributary areas within the region. Despite rapid traffic growth at Chinese ports during the period under study, the latter seem to remain polarized by established hubs such as Korean ports and Hong Kong. This research reveals the strong relation between local port policies and the evolution of shipping network design.

The impacts of maritime piracy on global economic development: the case of Somalia

This paper investigates the impacts of maritime piracy on global economic development. Calibrated with data between 2003 and 2008, we model shipping demands and competition in the Far East-Europe container liner shipping service and investigate the economic welfare loss effects due to reduced volumes of trade and shipping, as well as efficiency loss due to geographical re-routing of shipping networks which would be otherwise uneconomical. The substantial economic loss simulated from our model indicates that, even from purely the perspective of economic interests, more efforts from the international community should be dedicated to tackle maritime piracy.

Competitiveness of short sea shipping and the role of port: the case of North Europe

In accelerating the integration of the European Union (EU) and achieving more equal modal split, short sea shipping (SSS) has become an increasingly important component in European transport planning. Despite the active promotion by the EU, however, questions have been raised on whether SSS can realistically compete with unimodal road transport as it is required to overcome considerable hurdles, notably efficiency and cohesiveness between different parts of the multimodal transportation chain. This paper attempts to address this issue by undertaking an economic feasibility analysis investigating the potential competitiveness of SSS in the Baltic Region. The generalized costs of different SSS options will be simulated and the potential of different options in maximizing SSS competitiveness will be visualized through applying geographical information system. It is anticipated that this paper can provide an invaluable insight to the development of EUs multimodal transport planning.

The Evolution and Research Trends of Port Geography

Despite the long existence of port geography research, there has been no systematic investigation on its evolution and research trends. Hence, through investigating 155 port geography articles featured in geography journals between 1956 and 2011, this article studied the evolution and research trends of port geography. The article argues that port geography had gradually evolved from a secondary and encyclopedic subdiscipline within transport and human geographies to a primary and specialized one. Such a trend had blurred its “geographicalness,” however, with port geography moving toward the more applied and interdisciplinary transportation. The article also indicates that further research would be required to understand the communication between port geography and other disciplines, as well as philosophical and epistemological issues.

Modelling port choice in an uncertain environment

Port choice is an important issue to be investigated to ensure the effective integration of container supply chains and the sustainable development of regional economy. The selection of appropriate ports to facilitate shipping activities and international trade is crucial for many stakeholders, including shipping lines, port administrators, cargo shippers and national governments. The task is essentially a process of multiple criterion decision-making (MCDM) under uncertainty, requiring analysts to derive rational decisions from uncertain and incomplete data related to different quantitative and qualitative determinants. This paper aims at proposing a new conceptual port choice method by explaining the role fuzzy logic in evidential reasoning in a complementary way, in which various forms of raw data (either objective or subjective) collected to evaluate port performance can first be converted into and presented as fuzzy grades defined using linguistics terms with degrees of belief (DoBs) and second be combined using evidential reasoning to produce a port choice preference score. The method is applied to analyse the selection of major Northeast Asian (NEA) container ports from a shipping line’s perspective. The outcome, a port choice preference score, is calculated using evidential reasoning to directly synthesize the true estimation of the port with respect to each criterion and therefore, unlike a relative ranking index, keeps the ‘goodness’ of port evaluation, capable of benchmarking a specific port’s performance and monitoring the increase of its competitiveness in a longitude study with respect to an individual criterion or all the criteria as a whole.

The Transportation Sector of India's Economy: Dry Ports as Catalysts for Regional Development

Two East Asian specialists review the development of dry ports in India as part of a broader national program to eliminate transportation bottlenecks, improve transport efficiency, and spur the economic development of interior regions by lowering road and rail freight tariffs, and thus decreasing the costs of imports (and making exports more competitive). A key focus is on comparing the relative efficiency of public- versus private-sector operation of dry ports, and on examining the effects on dry port efficiency of current Indian Government policy. The authors test two hypotheses relating to the efficiency of port operations using information derived from their field study/interviews at 28 dry ports in Northwest India (reflecting three different types of ownership/operation combinations) as well as quantitative data measuring port efficiency.

The changing tides of port geography (1950–2012)

Human geographers actively studied ports in past decades. However, the extent to which port geography constituted a specific research stream within human geography remained largely unanswered. By reviewing 399 port papers published in major geography journals, the authors critically investigated the trends and changing tides of port geography research. The findings point out the emergence of the core community shifting from mainstream geography research to increasing connection with other disciplines, notably transport studies. The paper offers a progressive view on human geographers’ abilities to form a research community on port development, while identifying opportunities in the pursuit of collaboration between different academic disciplines.

Port-Focal Logistics and Global Supply Chains

Changes in the global economy have caused significant and far-reaching effects in many areas, including transportation, logistics, and supply chains. As supply chains evolve and adapt to these changes, ports will play a pivotal role. This book examines the challenges that ports, logistics, and supply chains have faced in the past decades, and introduces the concept of port focal logistics. Evolution of ports, industrial organization, government policies, and the role of institutions are explored. Development strategies undertaken by ports, logistics, and supply chain stakeholders are investigated using experiences from developed and developing countries. Case studies from Brazil and India are presented.

The optimal ship sizes of container liner feeder services in Southeast Asia: a ship operator's perspective

Deploying containerships with increasing carrying capacities in achieving better capacity utilization has been well-documented. However, ship operators often face the problem in deploying containerships with the right size, especially given the capital-intensive nature of container liner shipping, which would lead to substantial implications if inappropriate ships were used. While studies on optimal ship size exist, focus has mainly been on ship operation cost while its implications on other components, or whether there are adequate demands to load the ship, are often not considered. Moreover, while many studies focus on trunk routes, feeder services, despite its parallel significance in a hub-and-spoke shipping network, are often overlooked. Understanding such deficiency, using intra-Southeast Asian feeder liner services as the case study, this paper has undertaken an investigation in simulating the optimal containership sizes from the perspective of ship operators. Through questionnaire survey and economic modelling, analysis focused on whether the perception of industrial players matches simulated results. This paper should play substantial impacts by enabling ship operators to develop better ship deployment strategies through providing an invaluable insight into the feeder market within this increasingly important region, as well as providing a well-developed methodology for maritime researchers in ship size modelling in other regions with potentially different shipping networks.