Evaluation of port disruption impacts in the global liner shipping network

Pablo E Achurra-Gonzalez,Nils Goldbeck,Panagiotis Angeloudis,Marc E J Stettler,Daniel J Graham,Konstantinos Zavitsas

doi:10.1186/s41072-019-0043-8

Pablo E Achurra-Gonzalez, Nils Goldbeck + Show 4 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1186/s41072-019-0043-8

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Abstract

The global container shipping network is vital to international trade. Current techniques for its vulnerability assessment are constrained due to the lack of historical disruption data and computational limitations due to typical network sizes. We address these modelling challenges by developing a new framework, composed by a game-theoretic attacker-defender model and a cost-based container assignment model that can identify systemic vulnerabilities in the network. Given its focus on logic and structure, the proposed framework has minimal input data requirements and does not rely on the presence of extensive historical disruption data. Numerical implementations are carried in a global-scale liner network where disruptions occur in Europe’s main container ports. Model outputs are used to establish performance baselines for the network and illustrate the differences in regional vulnerability levels and port criticality rankings with different disruption magnitudes and flow diversion strategies. Sensitivity analysis of these outputs identifies network components that are more susceptible to lower levels of disruption which are more common in practice and evaluates the effectiveness of component-level interventions seeking to increase the resilience of the system.

Highlights

Ocean shipping is the principal mode of international freight transport, underpinning global trade
Complex network techniques have so far been a popular choice for the analysis of liner shipping networks (Bartholdi et al 2016; Angeloudis et al 2007; Ducruet et al 2010; Ducruet 2016) which in the context of vulnerability assessment can be classified into pure-topological or flow-based models
These ports surpass Felixstowe in the criticality ranking for disruptions levels above 60% due to the considerable number of containers affected when disruptions occur at Bremerhaven or Rotterdam

Summary

Introduction

Ocean shipping is the principal mode of international freight transport, underpinning global trade. Flow-based models do not have such shortcomings and are more suitable for the study of liner shipping vulnerabilities, subject to the availability of historical disruption data that could be used to determine expectations of failure for network components. The model assumes that loaded containers have fixed a set of daily rent, uniform loads, handling priorities, and cargo depreciation rates, while all cargo is prioritised This departure from real-world practices (ocean carriers can utilise varying cost structures, shippers incur variable depreciation costs depending on cargo, and repositioning penalties apply in imbalanced trade lanes) was made to simplify data requirements in this study, but is made without loss of generality, as the model formulation is sufficiently flexible to accommodate such data.

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Conclusions and further research