Abstract
The Physical Internet (PI) is a novel, comprehensive and long-term vision of the future global freight transport and logistics (FTL) system, which is aimed at radically improving its efficiency and sustainability. As research on the PI concept is still young, the functioning of maritime ports in the context of the PI is still underexplored. Our aim is to contribute to the scientific debate about radically different futures for maritime ports around the world, by identifying their possible future development paths towards the PI. We construct an evolutionary port development framework that identifies the main dimensions of the PI in relation to ports, including governance, operational, and digital aspects. To design the future development paths towards the PI, we conducted a scenario analysis and used a Delphi survey amongst port development and PI experts. The resulting expectation is that a fully globally functioning of the PI may not be reached by 2040. Also, our analysis shows that global governance of FTL systems is critical for the pace of development and adoption. Building on the identified potential future development paths, we provide a discussion, relevant for port authorities and other stakeholders, as well as avenues for future research.
Highlights
Over centuries, maritime ports have evolved to function as critical facilitators of global trade, affecting the local economy, and the way that national and regional economies operate (Brooks et al, 2014)
By conducting a contextual scenario analysis, constructing a Physical Internet (PI) PF, and executing a two-round Delphi study, a set of PI Port Development Paths (PI PDPs) that showed the potential evolution of ports towards PI Ports was generated
Despite the PI’s components stemming from tech nological innovation, the PI PDPs confirmed that the Governance Dimension is most likely to become a bottleneck, and the most critical in terms of port development
Summary
Maritime ports have evolved to function as critical facilitators of global trade, affecting the local economy, and the way that national and regional economies operate (Brooks et al, 2014). They can be seen as highly complex systems due to the large and diverse number of stakeholders involved and the types of services they offer; functioning as nodes of the logistics network, and as a location of industrial and value-added services (Nijdam & Van der Horst, 2017). The International PI Conference (IPIC) is being held to progressively share and develop knowledge on the topic of the PI (IPIC, 2021)
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