Beyond throughput: Evaluating maritime port competitiveness using MABAC and Bayesian methods

Abstract

The performance ranking framework of maritime ports conducted by the World Shipping Council relies solely on a singular criterion, such as container throughput. This ranking method lacks a comprehensive assessment of port competitiveness and may have biases. Therefore, this work proposes a new approach to measure the competitiveness of maritime ports by considering multiple performance criteria, such as port processing time, bunker fuel quality, bunker fuel suppliers, geographical advantages, and port security. To ensure fairness in weight estimation, both objective method (using the Entropy method) and subjective method (using the Best Worst method) are employed and integrated using Bayes’ theorem. Furthermore, the Multi-Attributive Border Approximation Area Comparison (MABAC) method is utilized to evaluate the ranking of ports based on the combined effect of these criteria, referred to as the Port Competitiveness Index (PCI). To test the effectiveness of the proposed methodology, the top 20 major maritime ports on the Asia-Europe service route are determined. This finding highlights the practical insights gained from the study, which can be applied to improve the performance of ports across different service routes worldwide.