Analysis of topology and routing strategy of container shipping network on “Maritime Silk Road”

Abstract

In this paper, 706 ports and 2306 container liner routes along the Maritime Silk Road from June to December in 2017 were selected as the sample data of the "Maritime Silk Road" container shipping network. By constructing the network feature set to determine the type of network, argue that the "Maritime Silk Road" shipping network belongs to the scale network and analyze its topological characteristics. By calculating the power law exponent of the network degree distribution, it is concluded that the network belongs to the Barabási-Albert (BA) network. Based on the theory of BA scale network performance improvement, the core parameters of the network are optimized by designing the simulation experiment under different scenarios, and the optimal strategy of improving the capacity of the network is explored. The experimental results show that the congestion of the Maritime Silk Road network is affected by the network node capacity and the network routing strategy. There are different optimal parameter configurations under different conditions. The research results are importance for the "Maritime Silk Road" shipping network’s development.