Spatial pattern of location advantages of ports along the Maritime Silk Road

Abstract

Location advantages of ports refer to the current developments of ports based on their conditions, such as geographic location, traffic accessibility and hinterland economy, etc., and the spatial pattern of ports' location advantages reflects the spatial distributions, the regularities and the correlations among their conditions for development. A good understanding of the spatial patterns of ports' location advantages can help to better identify the relative advantages of ports, position ports' functions and make strategic plans for development. This paper selected 1259 ports from 63 countries along the Maritime Silk Road as research objects and builds an accessing model to analyze their location advantages on the bases of six factors: the influence of strategic shipping pivot, the competitiveness of port location potential, port network status, the influence of city, the influence of traffic trunk, and road network density in hinterland. The study has the following three findings. Firstly, the location advantages of ports show a "high-low-high" distribution pattern from the west to the east, displaying an obvious "core-periphery" regionalized distribution. Secondly, most ports have high location advantages, mainly located in Strait of Malacca, the United Arab Emirates, northern Mediterranean coastal region and China-Japan region, the top 10 ports are mainly located in Singapore, China, Malaysia and Japan, indicating that the shipping industry in Asia-Pacific region has stepped to the far front of the global competition; slow economic growths, wars, far away from the Belt and Road countries or bad climate have low location advantages, mainly located in African coastal areas, Oceania, Northeast Europe and Russia. Thirdly, compared with the landward location advantages, the seaward location advantages have a higher influence, and different indicators of location advantages have different influences on the evaluation results, the competitiveness of port location potential being the core indicator.

Analysis of Transportation Network Scheduling of Maritime Silk Road and International Digital Trade Potential Based on Improved Genetic Algorithm under Digital Trade Barriers

“…In terms of international trade, the western route already has a foundation for cooperation, and many large-scale projects have been implemented. The countries on the western route have responded positively to the policy, and the political mutual trust between the two sides is relatively high [7]. To analyze the scale of digital trade exports, 21 countries along the Silk Road are selected and divided into four regions according to the traditional geography, as shown in Figure 1.…”

“…Yang et al [5] conducted a detailed study on the resource management scheduling of maritime networks by using a deep learning (DL) algorithm combined with the optimal link selection scheme of Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) [5]. Zhang et al [6][7][8] proposed a new intelligent and effective method based on an improved Ant Colony Optimization (ACO) to solve the optimization problem of the path of multiobjective ships [6]. Shang et al [9] proposed a DL-based energy optimization scheduling method for ship power systems, and through simulation experiments, the effectiveness and superiority of the optimal scheduling method were verified [9].…”

Research on regional accessibility and evolution of spatial structure: based on the demonstration of the core zone 30a of the Silk Road economic belt

“…Around the "Belt and Road" initiative, scholars have focused on the economic spillover effects [25][26] , carbon emissions from transportation [27][28] , and the strategic value of infrastructure construction [29][30] in the core area of the Silk Road Economic Belt, with a preference for the relatively developed maritime Silk Road urban clusters [31][32] . The research on the relatively backward land transportation along the Silk Road Economic Belt is less frequent and mainly explores the four southwestern provinces and cities [33] and the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region [34] as the starting point, while the research based on the accessibility and spatial pattern evolution of cross-border transportation is relatively few and old.…”

Chinese Coastal Fishing Ports Classification Based on Remote Sensing Images

“…Employing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to analyze the positional advantages of fishing ports, the spatial distribution and patterns of their development are uncovered. This method aids in the identification of the relative strengths of fishing ports and assists in defining their multifaceted roles [28]. It lays a theoretical foundation for the establishment of modern fishing ports and is of importance for the scientific planning of industrial sectors within economic zones.…”