Alvin Yao

Impact Factor:3.5

DOI number:10.1080/03088839.2020.1859149

Journal:Maritime Policy & Management

Key Words:Arctic shipping; Fulcrum ports selection; Expert judgments; Evidential reasoning approach; Multicriteria decision model

Abstract:As a result of the opening Arctic waters, Arctic Northeast Passage (NEP) can be used as a shortcut between Asian and European ports, which may bring considerable economic benefits. Due to the harsh environment and substantial costs, it is difficult to construct many fulcrum ports along the Russian Arctic coast, which provide support services for ships navigating the NEP. A multi-criteria decision model is hence constructed to select fulcrum ports among candidates to support Arctic shipping through the NEP. Based on the model, the evidential reasoning (ER) approach is used to aggregate quantitative data and qualitative expert judgments to generate distributed assessments for candidate ports, as well as modeling uncertainties such as incompleteness and ignorance in the assessment of candidate ports. Their suitability as fulcrum ports are prioritized according to the utilities. The results show that Pevek, Sabetta, and Murmansk are the ideal fulcrum ports for the eastern, central, and western section, respectively, of the Russian Arctic coast. The associated policy recommendations include prioritizing the improvement of selected fulcrum ports, attaching importance to promising candidate ports, updating outdated infrastructure, and implementing more related projects. A sensitivity analysis conducted in this study validates the feasibility and reasonability of the proposed model.

Indexed by:Periodical papers

Discipline:Management

Document Type:J

Volume:49

Issue:2

Page Number:214-235

ISSN No.:0308-8839

Translation or Not:no

Date of Publication:2020-12-29

Included Journals:SSCI

Links to published journals:https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03088839.2020.1859149