Social, Economic and Environmental Sustainability of Port Regions: MCDM Approach in Composite Index Creation

Abstract

Maritime transport and ports are among the most important linkages between global economies, handling more than 90% of internationally traded goods. Economic importance of maritime transport imposes significant implications on the social and environmental performance of port regions. The paper aims to create composite indices as relevant, scientific-based tools used in comparing and monitoring various aspects of sustainability across 37 sea port regions in seven countries on the European side of the Mediterranean, covering a five-year period from 2014 to 2018. The model encompasses Eurostat and OECD annual NUTS2 level data covering economic, social and environmental dimensions of sustainability. Two important indicators of maritime transport activity, maritime transport of freight and maritime transport of passengers, are included within the group of economic indicators. To create composite indices, the multicriteria decision making (MCDM) framework was used as an integrated approach of entropy in the weighting segment, and the Preference Ranking Organization METHod for Enrichment of Evaluations (PROMETHEE) as an aggregation method. The results highlight GDP per capita and population density as indicators of the greatest relative importance when it comes to port regions sustainability. The ranking results indicate that, despite the fact that Attica is the best ranked region in terms of overall sustainability, the largest number of top rated port regions are in Italy, Spain and France.

Managing Maritime Container Ports’ Sustainability: A Reference Model

“…-How to understand sustainable maritime transport and how blockchain technology can be used to make maritime transport more efficient and sustainable [10]; -A literature review on sustainability in maritime studies [11]; -The challenges of sustainability in the economic, environmental and social dimensions concerning maritime transport, including maritime ports [12]; -Digitalisation as a sustainable solution for maritime logistics [13]; -…”

“…The development of a composite sustainability index of port regions for management purposes [12]; -Information systems such as Port Community Systems [14].…”

“…Summarising the results of the literature survey, it has to be said that while the issue of port management is widely discussed in the literature, the aspect of sustainable management is less researched, and the reference model of port management can hardly be considered correct. Unfortunately, this is not an isolated opinion, as other researchers have expressed the opinion that "particularly noticeable is the lack of research and practice that would offer the authorities in port regions adequate management instruments that could assess, monitor and measure the effects of the implementation of sustainability strategies" [12]. Therefore, the research objective is to develop a reference model for the sustainable management of transshipment in a maritime container port, and the purpose of this paper is to present the research results obtained.…”

Two-stage weighted PROMETHEE II with results’ visualization

“…The decision problems may comprise various goals: to find the best alternative, to separate the alternatives into groups such as acceptable and unacceptable alternatives or good/bad; dominated and non-dominated, to find the clusters with similar or indifferent alternatives, or to create an order of alternatives (Ishizaka and Nemery 2013 ). The ranking may cover countries or regions (Ghasemi et al 2021 ; Stankovic et al 2021 ; Roszkowska and Filipowicz-Chomko 2020 ; Ulutaş and Karaköy 2019 ; Kuncova and Seknickova 2018 ; Kramulova and Jablonsky 2016 ; Latuszynska 2014 ; Kuncova and Doucek 2011 ; Dincer 2011 ), universities (Wu et al 2012 ), institutions as banks, start-up or public benefit organizations (Beheshtinia and Omidi 2017 ; Górecka and Chojnacka 2017 ; Nikoloudis et al 2017 ), renewable energy resources, energy pathways or energy technologies (Seknickova and Jablonsky 2020 ; Lee and Chang 2018 ; Schröder et al 2019 ; Regös 2013 ), materials or machines (Karande et al 2016 ; Chatterjee and Chakraborty 2012 ), product (Turcksin et al 2011 ), websites (Shayganmehr and Montazer 2021 ), people (Alguliyev et al 2019 ) and others.…”

“…If the goal of the decision problem is to rank alternatives, it is necessary to select a method for the solution that provides this type of result. Methods that have been used to obtain a complete arrangement of alternatives include, for example, WSA—Weighted Sum Approach, WSM—Weighted Sum Method (Lee and Chang 2018 ; Dincer 2011 ), WASPAS—Weighted Aggregated Sum Product Assessment (Karande et al 2016 ), SWARA—Stepwise Weight Assessment Ratio Analysis (Ghasemi et al 2021 ), VIKOR—VIseKriterijumska Optimizacija i kompromisno Resenje (Lee and Chang 2018 ; Wu et al 2012 ), AHP—Analytic Hierarchy Process (Shayganmehr and Montazer 2021 ; Beheshtinia and Omidi 2017 ; Kramulova and Jablonsky 2016 ; Wu et al 2012 ), TOPSIS—Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (Lee and Chang 2018 ; Latuszynska 2014 ; Kuncova and Doucek 2011 ), some modifications of the ELECTRE methods—ELimination Et Choix Traduisant la REalité, such as modified ELECTRE II (Lee and Chang 2018 ) or modified ELECTRE III (Kuncova and Seknickova 2013 , 2018 , 2020 ), or the PROMETHEE II method—Preference Ranking Organization METHod for Enrichment Evaluations (Ghasemi et al 2021 ; Shayganmehr and Montazer 2021 ; Stankovic et al 2021 ; Seknickova and Jablonsky 2020 ; Schröder et al 2019 ; Nikoloudis et al 2017 ; Regös 2013 ; Turcksin et al 2011 ; Koutroumanidis et al 2002 ).…”