Building a Measurement Model for Port-Hinterland. Container Transportation Network Resilience

Abstract

The ongoing development of world trade bolsters the demand for container transport that is safe and resistant to risks. Being important in international logistics and local economy development, container transportation between seaports and the associated hinterland is worth of being studied. In this thesis, we study a concept called resilience and apply it into the context of port-hinterland container transportation network. Resilience is one of the concepts dealing with safety and risk management issues academically, but with its own distinctive characteristics differentiating itself from others like stability and robustness. We firstly propose our definition of resilience in this context based on literature reviews. Next, a model is built to measure it quantitatively from shippers’ perspective by adopting stochastic integer programming. This measurement model is then testified to demonstrate its feasibility by a numerical simulation taking the case of Port of Gothenburg and part of its hinterland. By studying thoroughly the resilience concept in general and analyzing the results from the numerical simulation, we discuss the validity and reliability of our contextual resilience definition and the measurement model. We find them to be not only theoretically meaningful but practically useful.