System Dynamics Analysis for the Governance Measures Against Container Port Congestion

Abstract

Container throughput in Shanghai port has been continually increasing, with severe congestion impacts. The effectiveness and comprehensiveness of governance policies are increasingly important. This study proposes a conceptual framework and simulation of congestion governance measures and their effectiveness on congestion control in a data-driven case study for Shanghai port. The contributions herein serve as a starting point in the identification of four alternative congestion governance options (Increasing the transport infrastructure, Multimodal transport, Smart strategy, and Interconnection), and explore dynamic interactions among them. The design of this study is to firstly develop a container port congestion evaluation model to measure the governance effect; secondly to undertake the triangle analysis in the dynamic system balance: demand of hinterland transport, container port congestion, and container port congestion governance; thirdly to describe four congestion governance options with a detailed description of feedback loops generated by the system dynamics model; finally to propose a policy framework aiming at the advantages and disadvantages of these four options. This study function as stepping stones towards the revealing of the biggest challenge in effective mitigation of port congestion systems by being considered not just a hardware issue (option 1) but more importantly organizational issues (options 2~4). It should be a process of coordination and optimization among 4 options.

Risk Assessment of Port Congestion Risk during the COVID-19 Pandemic

“…Iris et al [26] formulated and solved a mathematical model for the flexible containership loading problem for seaport container terminals. Instead, Saeed, Song and Andersen [4] and Xu, Li, Liu and Yang [9] discussed the measures for mitigating port congestion with considering other stakeholders' engagement. Compared to after-the-fact management, the identification, assessment and forecasting of congestion are preferred by academic research.…”

“…Normally, strategies proposed by researchers for port congestion management can be divided into reactive strategies and proactive strategies. The former are applied after congestion emerged, and typical examples of these are evolution analysis of port congestion [5,6], and congestion governance modes [4,7] or measures [8,9]. The latter refers to the identification and assessment of congestion or congestion risk before it occurs.…”

Modeling the Truck Appointment System as a Multi-Player Game

“…A review of the TAS state-of-the-art and the state-of-the-practice can be found in the work of Huynh et al [19] and Abdelmagid et al [20]. A review of congestion management policies can be found in the work of Xu et al [21]. Table 1 provides a summary of these studies.…”

“…Constraint (19) ensures that each appointment is assigned only to one time-window. The order of the appointments for a truck and the quota constraint are satisfied using constraints (20) and (21). Equation ( 22) calculates the number of arrivals in each time-window.…”

Construction of Rural Governance Digital Driven by Artificial Intelligence and Big Data

“…Xu et al [18] introduced a system dynamic analysis method for data governance. e proposed method measures the container port congestion and provides an actual set of data for the further analysis process.…”