Risk assessment of port competitiveness based on vague soft sets

Abstract

Assessment of risk that can put a port enterprise in a competitive disadvantage has increasingly become more important for port managers due to the forces of liberalisation and deregulation of international maritime business. Nonetheless, the competitive risk facing the port enterprise cannot be measured accurately by conventional methods as these techniques have some limitations in measuring vagueness, uncertainty, impreciseness and inability of defining the problem parameters precisely. In this study we therefore develop and apply an assessment model-based vague soft sets to measure the competitive risk facing the Dar es Salaam Port - Tanzania. The model's numerical results reveal that the competitive risk facing the port subject to performance enhancement is ubiquitous albeit moderate. Thus, the findings are valuable to the Dar es Salaam Port decision makers for strategic planning on competitive risk management.