AbstractsTransportation

Capacity Expansion Strategy for Ports in a Competition Environment :

by Y. Liang




Institution: Delft University of Technology
Department:
Year: 2009
Record ID: 1250435
Full text PDF: http://resolver.tudelft.nl/uuid:136a747a-b2a4-4cd9-b616-153805588779


Abstract

This thesis carries out the capacity expansion strategy for port in a competition environment. A new model which deals sea port as a node in the logistic chain will be built in this study. And the port of Rotterdam and port of Antwerp will be used as a special case study. Nowadays containers are widely used in world trade business. Millions of containers are being moved from one point to another every single day. In the last decades, world container traffic has increased enormously because of the increasing wodd population and the more specific needs of customers. The world container traffic increased from around 100 Million TEU in 1990 to around 400 Million TEU in 2005 (Hofstra University). And the container traffic is expected to remain growing in the future. The growth in international container shipping will continue with the expected percentage of 9% annually up to 2015 (Heymann, 2006). Ports, as facilities for accommodate ships and transferring cargoes, play essential nodes in maritime-land freight transport network. The strong growth in container industry, gives a good opportunity for port development on one hand. On the other hand, ports are facing great pressure of handling with the rapid-growing container traffic. Due to the enormous growth in total demand and uncertain demand fluctuation in short periods, ports are always faced with capacity problems, either short-capacity or over-capacity. When taking into account new trends in containerization, and intensively increasing competition among ports in regional port clusters, port planning in capacity will become even more significant. Therefore, developing best strategies to deal with port capacity expansion problems in competitive environments is a main challenge faced by port authonties. In order to provide information to port authorities when they make port capacity expansion strategies, simulation models are widely used. In these simulation models, main focus is on hinterland transport network, because of the quality of hintedand transport has become increasingly important for the competitiveness of a seaport (Konings, 2007). Basically, two types of approaches for transport modeling can be used in transportation planning concerning port capacity problems. One is simulation of route assignment in network, e.g. the SMILE model (Strategic Model for Integrated Logistics and Evaluation) developed by the Dutch institute TNO, which simulates the assignment of freight flows for different commodity types and transportation modes. The other one is projection of port demand based on macro-economic relationships with a more or less fixed market share for a particular port. The example of this second approach is the GSM model (Goederen Stromen Model) used by the Port of Rotterdam. But there are some limitations in these two approaches. The first approach does not account for port development. This approach mainly focuses on hinterland transportation network. However, port investment characteristics are not taken into account in this approach. The second approach…