Featured
Featured
Featured
The deepening of the Elbe river: game changer for Hamburg?
By Theo Notteboom Recently, it was announced that the project to deepen and widen the river Elbe, the nautical access to the port of Hamburg, got the green light. The river Elbe was deepened for the last time in 1999. The idea to improve the nautical conditions on the Elbe is on the table already for many years but project approval was stalled due to environmental issues and procedural complexities. Dredging projects are sensitive in political, port and community circles given the investments involved and the associated economic and...
Featured
The 'Yin' and 'Yang' of port governance
On the complementary (rather than opposing) forces that interact to form a dynamic port governance system, in which the whole is greater than the assembled parts, was dedicated the presentation of PortEconomics member and co-director Theo Notteboom during the Jean Monnet Symposium on the future of the European Port Policy, that was held in Chios, Greece. Using a Chinese metaphor, Theo discusses the "Yin and Yang of seaport governance", and discussed them during the Jean Monnet Round-Table: Towards a better Port Governance. Theo was...
Featured
Private entry in cruise terminal operations in the Mediterranean Sea
Aiming to effectively respond to calls for upgrading cruise terminals, while safeguarding public spending, port authorities started to seek the active involvement of third parties to finance, construct, operate, and/or commercially develop cruise facilities. Specialized cruise terminals replace multi-purpose or temporary docking facilities. New cruise terminals are built and existing ones are upsized and upgraded, imposing additional investments on the hosting ports. In their award winning paper (Winner of “Best Conference Paper”,...
Featured
Digitalisation drives modernisation of maritime trade
Pierre Cariou was involved in organising the ISLI Supply Chain Forum, “Emerging Challenges in a Complex Future”, held at the Kedge Business School in Bordeaux in March 2018. One of the panel discussions moderated by Pierre Cariou focused on the digitalisation of shipping supply chains. Dominique Lebreton, MGI chief business development officer, also spoke about Channel 5 and artificial intelligence. Focus on the conclusions of this panel discussion. What are the impacts of digitalisation on the maritime sector? For the forum, we...
Featured
A game theory application of a cruise value chain – the case of China
Regardless of the facts showing a booming Chinese cruise market, cruise operations in China are very different from the current practices of the two major cruise markets – the US and the Mediterranean Sea. The recent port-study of PortEconomics member Grace Wang, co-authored with Qingcheng Zeng, Chenrui Qu and Joan Mileski (Texas A&M University at Galveston, USA) aims to quantify pricing strategies and possible incentive mechanisms of cruise operations in China. Using optimization in economic-based game theory, the complexity of...
Featured
The Analyst: we need more mavericks in ports
By Peter de Langen In various previous columns I have argued that port development is often ‘emergent’ rather than planned. Often, there is a huge gap between the port development plans on paper, and the realised port development. Of course, this is not unique to port development, but a common characteristic of most companies: the strategy emerges out of executed projects. If we accept this take on port development, it follows that port authorities/port development companies need ‘mavericks’, people that do not follow the...
Featured
The impact of management practices use on brazilian port authorities’ performance
The relation between management practices and the performance of Brazilian port authorities is the latest port study of PortEconomics members Peter De Langen, Jonas Mendes Constante and Larissa van der Lugt along with Guilherme Bergmann Borges Vieira, Rogério João Lunkes. The authors developed a survey-based evaluation tool of the quality of management practices . In addition, a set of operational and financial performance indicators of such port authorities and their ports was calculated. The differences in operational and financial...
Featured
Measuring the social license to operate for ports
PortEconomics member Michael Dooms presented the results of a survey conducted along with Bruno Moeremans (Vrije University Brussels) during the 16th World Conference of AIVP held in 11-14 June 2018 in Quebec, Canada. With his presentation, Michael discussed the following issues: a. Challenges of port managing bodies in terms of SDGs: Stakeholder inclusion (needs to move from ad-hoc involvement to continuous inclusion) Integrated planning (from node-based to supply chain): an efficient supply chain will be a green supply chain! ...
Featured