Research on the shipping network structure under the influence of Arctic routes

Abstract

Arctic routes represent changes to the exsisting liner network for container shipping between Asia, Europe and North America, because they have significant potential for commercial navigation. It is necessary to analyse the changes in shipping networks under the influence of Arctic routes. This paper focuses on the analysis of the evolution of shipping networks that are affected by Arctic routes, based on building an improved complex growth network model. This model is verified by its applications to existing shipping networks. This model is applied to the shipping networks with Arctic routes, and the main findings obtained are as follows: (1) The network nodes gradually increase and the average degree of network nodes shows an upward trend. In addition, the closeness of internal links in the maritime network increase, the network tends to be in an orderly state, and the network scale is even more uneven. (2) The hub ports of the existing shipping network, which are located in East Asia, Northwest Europe and North America, show that the effects of the Arctic routes are more important. The states of some of the other ports are improved because of their superior geographical locations. (3) Then, the network in which the ports are indirectly connected to the Arctic routes is extracted. The extracted network has the largest number of ports in East Asia and Northwest Europe. In the network, from the perspective of the ports along the Arctic routes, the value of the Northeast Passage ports are generally higher than those of the Northwest Passage ports. The ports of Murmansk, Sabetta, and Reykjavik in the Northeast Passage have the highest values, and the port of Iqaluit is the Northwest Passage port with the largest value.