Abstract
This chapter proposes an analysis of worldwide inter-port shipping flows from a strength-clustering perspective. A variety of factors seem to explain the formation of clusters: geographic proximity among closely located ports (i.e., maritime regions), trade proximity (corridors) and historical path-dependency (long-term ties) among more distant ports. Because those factors have not been previously directly tested, this chapter paves the way for further research on the geographic and economic relevance of clusters in the network analysis of shipping flows.
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Notes
- 1.
Ducruet (2008a) calculated that the proportion of world container traffic at ports located in urban areas of over one million inhabitants has increased from 66 % in 1980 to 77 % in 2005. Of course, these increases are influenced by the inclusion of many hub ports for which transshipment traffic is counted twice, such as in Singapore, Hong Kong, and Busan.
- 2.
Ducruet et al. (2009) differentiates between the maritime façade (coastal alignment of ports), the port region (the inland area smaller than the hinterland but wider than the port city where the port activities influence the economic structure), the port range (the coastal system of interdependent ports), the port network (the portfolio distribution of a given carrier), and the port system (interconnection of ports by shipping networks within a given area).
- 3.
This statement should not ignore that some authors point to specific situations in which a relationship is established between performance and network design. For instance, Lago et al. (2001) note that last ports of call attract more cargo on average because of transit time advantages; Notteboom (2006) specifies that upstream ports generate more cargo throughputs because ocean carriers compensate for the deviation between distance and time; Ducruet (2008a) finds that ports situated within larger urban regions often have a higher share of long-distance connections in their traffic. The main problem underscored in this chapter is the lack of systematic empirical verification, especially on a global scale.
- 4.
Twenty-Foot Equivalent Unit (TEU): a normalized measure of container traffic and vessel capacity referring to the number of 20-foot container boxes. Vessel capacities can also be measured in deadweight tonnage (DWT) or “commercial capacity”.
- 5.
Other nodes that are commercial ports such as Istanbul (Turkey) and Port Said (Egypt) were also omitted because of their enormous number of calls compared to their actual traffic. Their proximity to important strategic passages has caused them to be reported by many vessels, although not every call represents a commercial operation at the terminals. Other cases include Brunsbuttel (Germany), a port at the mouth of the Elbe River, whose calls were attributed to Hamburg, the actual destination. Finally, some terminals have been merged in the data with their representative port, such as Port Botany and Sydney (Australia).
- 6.
The hub service is a combination of line-bundling and local services centralized upon one main transshipment center. A mother vessel calls at a transshipment hub where containers can be transferred to another mother vessel (i.e., interchange) or to a feeder vessel that carries out the rest of the local or regional service (Brocard et al., 1995). There are a few round-the-world (RTW) services where ships are bigger. Other services are pendulum services such as Europe-Asia and local services such as Rotterdam-United Kingdom. Line-bundling services often connect different global regions while hub-and-spoke services are more intra-regional.
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Ducruet, C. (2013). Ports in a World Maritime System: A Multilevel Analysis. In: Rozenblat, C., Melançon, G. (eds) Methods for Multilevel Analysis and Visualisation of Geographical Networks. Methodos Series, vol 11. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-6677-8_8
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