What makes a port globally competitive? ... a multi-criteria approach

What is it about?

Douglas Hales at the University of Rhode Island has been working with issues of competitiveness of sea ports, worldwide, over several years. This paper is one of the outputs of his team's work, a team that I (Nikhilesh Dholakia) was a part of. Other members of this team were from Asia, Europe and Mideast. The Hales-led approach is distinctive in that it takes a view of port competitiveness based on many, oft-at-odds, criteria... rather than just 1 or 2 main criteria.

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Why is it important?

There are changes afoot in the world of ports. These range from the widening of the Panama Canal, and the arrival of massively larger ships from Asia to USA east coast ports; the rapid expansion and upgrading of ports in Asia, Africa, Latin America; the likely movement of goods from China via rail-road to Mediterranean and other European ports, and then on to the Americas by ship; and so forth. In this changing world, this paper provides an anchor of analytical stability. It allows researchers and administrators to assess and improve the competitiveness of ports.

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