Maritime Networks Port Efficiency And Hinterland Connectivity In The Mediterranean

For millennia, the Mediterranean has been one of the most active trading areas, supported by a transport network connecting riparian cities and beyond to their hinterland. The Mediterranean has complex trade patterns and routes--but with key differences from the past. It is no longer an isolated world economy: it is both a trading area and a transit area linking Europe and North Africa with the rest of the world through the hub-and-spoke structure of maritime networks. Understanding how trade connectivity works in the Mediterranean, and elsewhere, is important to policy makers, especially those in developing countries in the Mediterranean, concerned with the economic benefits of large investment in infrastructure. Better connectivity is expected to increase trade with distant markets and stimulate activities in the hinterland. This book is a practical exploration of the three interdependent dimensions of trade connectivity: maritime networks, port efficiency, and hinterland connectivity. Because of the complexity and richness of maritime and trade patterns in the Mediterranean, the research book combines both a regional focus and globally scalable lessons. This book is intended for a wide readership of policy makers in maritime affairs, trade, or industry; professionals from the world of finance or development institutions; and academics. It combines empirical analysis of microeconomic shipping and port data with three case studies of choice of port (focusing on Spain, Egypt, and Morocco) and five case studies on hinterland development (Barcelona; Malta; Marseilles; Port Said East, Egypt; and Tanger Med, Morocco).

Written by leading experts in the field, this book offers an introduction to recent developments in port and hinterland strategies, operations and related specializations. The book begins with a broad overview of port definitions, concepts and the role of ports in global supply chains, and an examination of strategic topics such as port management, governance, performance, hinterlands and the port-city relationship. The second part of the book examines operational aspects of maritime, port and land networks. A range of topics are explored, such as liner networks, finance and business models, port-industrial clusters, container terminals, intermodality/synchromodality, handling and warehousing. The final section of the book provides insights into key issues of port development and management, from security, sustainability, innovation strategies, transition management and labour issues. Drawing on a variety of global case studies, theoretical insights are supplemented with real world and best practice examples, this book will be of interest to advanced undergraduates, postgraduates, scholars and professionals interested in maritime studies, transport studies, economics and geography.

This book investigates the analysis of maritime flows and networks from diverse disciplinary angles going across archaeology, history, geography, regional science, economics, mathematics, physics, and computer sciences. Based on a vast array of methods, such as Geographical Information Systems (GIS), spatial analysis, complex networks, modelling, and simulation, it addresses several crucial issues related with port hierarchy, route density, modal interdependency, network robustness and vulnerability, traffic concentration and seasonality, technological change and urban/regional economic development.

Port Management brings together a collection of seminal papers from Palgrave’s journal Maritime Economics and Logistics. It is a dynamic volume, containing contributions from leading authors with different disciplinary backgrounds, representing a vast regional diversity. The volume provides authoritative and timely investigations into key topics in port economics, including research on: global supply chains, port networks, choice modelling, port infrastructure, competition, port pricing, efficiency in European seaports, and an analysis of Chinese container ports. It is essential reading for professionals, scholars, and researchers interested in port economics.

Global trends in policy and technology related fields are rapidly reshaping the port industry worldwide. International in scope, this volume provides multidisciplinary insights into the role port cities adopt in dealing with global supply chains. Throughout the book, concepts of strategic management, supply chain management, port and transport economics and economic and transport geography are applied to offer an in-depth understanding of the processes underlying global supply chains and associated spatial and functional dynamics in port-cities. The book also discusses policy outcomes and implications relevant to port-cities positioned in different segments of global supply chains.

As centres for logistics activities, seaports have traditionally been the focus of maritime logistics chains. However, changes in production patterns, supported by the development of rapid transport of goods over long distances, have altered the logistics landscape. As a result, the relevance of port hinterland transport has become more important, with a consequent need for the high utilisation of transport resources and infrastructure through the consolidation of cargo flows and for seaports to extend their influence within their hinterlands to increase their competitiveness. The development worldwide of inland ports, terminals and dryports in their various forms, together with associated new functions and strategies, address these challenges in diverse ways to realise the potential benefits that come from the successful implementation of inland ports that connect seamlessly into transportation systems. This book comprises case studies and state-of-the-art examples of dryports in different parts of the world that have varying economic, social, institutional and environmental realities and which exhibit the complexity of, and diverse approaches to, this recent logistics phenomenon.

The competitive position of sea ports depends on their capability to forward incoming cargo from overseas to its final destination. Such capability is associated with the hinterland connectivity of the sea port. Hinterland connectivity of a port is mostly treated as a local indicator, describing the number of different hinterland locations served by a port via a direct service. However, with intermodality being on the rise, transfer connections and connections including multimodal transshipment become more feasible and common. This turns hinterland transport into a complex multimodal network, whose connectivity cannot be captured by the existing local notion. Using methods from the science of complex networks, this work extends the notion of hinterland connectivity by non-local (network) and multimodal aspects, and uses this notion to analyze hinterland connectivity for the European hinterland transport network of scheduled rail and barge services. The results show that overall structural capability to perform hinterland transport assignments increases tremendously as transfer connections and multimodal routes are established. Moreover, non-local measures show that ports with poor local connectivity can still be well positioned within a network, an insight that would be overlooked in a purely local analysis. Last but not least, all ports benefit individually from multimodal integration, but some do more than others. For instance, 'Multimodal hubs' are the most important contributors to multimodal integration, but their relative accessibility does not improve much.

This first book on Maritime Informatics describes the potential for Maritime Informatics to enhance the shipping industry. It examines how decision making in the industry can be improved by digital technology, and introduces the technology required to make Maritime Informatics a distinct and valuable discipline. Based on participating in EU funded research over the last six years to improve the shipping industry, the editors stipulate that there is a need for the new discipline of Maritime Informatics, which studies the application of information systems to increasing the efficiency, safety, and ecological sustainability of the world’s shipping industry. This book examines competition and collaboration between shipping companies, and also companies who serve shipping needs, such as ports and terminals. Practical examples from leading experts give the reader real world examples for better understanding.

The study presented in this report focuses on the technical evaluation of existing and new Mediterranean shipping routes and their impacts on hinterland transport networks and infrastructure capacity.

This book shares valuable insights into high-efficiency data transmission scheduling and into a group intelligent search and rescue approach for artificial intelligence (AI)-powered maritime networks. Its goal is to highlight major research directions and topics that are critical for those who are interested in maritime communication networks, equipping them to carry out further research in this field. The authors begin with a historical overview and address the marine business, emerging technologies, and the shortcomings of current network architectures (coverage, connectivity, reliability, etc.). In turn, they introduce a heterogeneous space/air/sea/ground maritime communication network architecture and investigate the transmission scheduling problem in maritime communication networks, together with solutions based on deep reinforcement learning. To accommodate the computation demands of maritime communication services, the authors propose a multi-vessel offloading algorithm for maritime mobile edge computing networks. In closing, they discuss the applications of swarm intelligence in maritime search and rescue.