Port sustainability and performance: A systematic literature review

Abstract

Motivated by a lack of research on port sustainability performance and assessment, this paper uses a systematic literature review to identify trends, measurement methods, and mechanisms for the implementation of strategy and policy in this area. The paper provides a comprehensive and critical evaluation of port operational sustainability, focusing on ascertaining the impact of its implementation. The study analysed and synthesised established characteristics in the current literature regarding the performance of port sustainability and its evaluation in terms of operations and management. Successful performance measurement in port sustainability is driven by the dependence on establishing accurate indicators as the basis for measurement. Our clustering of analytical sustainability indicators reveals that environmental research is focused on pollution, social research is mainly focused on human resource management, while economic research is mainly on port management and borderline investment. Findings are discussed in four key areas of port sustainability performance and assessment: existing trends, implementation of measures, mechanisms for implementation, and assessment gaps and challenges. For existing trends, attempts to evaluate the applicability and practicality of green operations have improved the awareness and promotion of governmental green policies. Implementation measures relate to the utilisation of techniques that reveal optimal practices for practical sustainable operations while mechanisms largely relate to establishing indicators which increase understanding of performance. Finally, challenges in this field include achieving consistency among ports in how sustainability is measured. Future research should incentivise improvements in port operational practice and encourage self-examination in order to reprioritise activity.

Port City Sustainability: A Review of Its Research Trends

“…(1) The type of literature: some conference papers and book chapters may lack peer reviews. In order to better demonstrate the current results of the research topic, we limited the analysis unit to peer-reviewed 'journal' articles, and excluded conference papers, book series, book chapters, commercial publications, reviews, reports, government documents, and white papers [30,37]. (2) The language of the literature: only materials in English were used.…”

“…Material evaluation means the analysis of the material according to dimensions, where abstract, explanative and structured means are used to understand and explain the text [35]. The research areas, research problems and research methods of articles were selected for classification and analysis in this study [30,31,41].…”

“…With the focus on sustainability and the deepening of sustainable practices for port cities, people have begun to pay attention to the implementation effects of sustainable plans or policies for port cities. Assessing sustainability performance or establishing evaluation standards are complex tasks involving multiple factors and various quantitative indicators [30]. Chen and Lam [51] applied a two-stage Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) approach to measure and compare the sustainability efficiency of 20 world-leading container port cities.…”

“…In recent years, as attention to the sustainability of ports and port cities is increasing, studies focused on port sustainability have gradually increased, and have appeared in some literature reviews [29][30][31][32]. As port sustainability is facing new challenges, it is important to update the literature review on the sustainability of port cities.…”

Masterplanning at the Port of Dover: The Use of Discrete-Event Simulation in Managing Road Traffic

“…Integration of "green port" policies aimed at reducing emissions of air pollutants and greenhouse gasses from logistic operations, in particular, is increasingly being seen as a core element of port masterplanning [2][3][4]. In this regard, port masterplanning is linked intrinsically to the three pillars of corporate sustainability (i.e., balancing economic growth with environmental and social considerations) [5,6].…”