Port Economics, Management and Policy

The Suez Canal is a major interoceanic passage supporting the massive Europe / Middle East / Asia shipping routes. It has experienced significant growth in transshipment activities.

Major bottlenecks of global maritime shipping are convenient locations for transshipment. The Panama cluster is no exception with more than 12 million TEUs handled in 2018.

Added a page dealing with an analysis and classification of the main types of container terminal footprints. Although the ideal footprint is rectangular, significant variations are observed because of physical, technical, and regulatory constraints. Recent land reclamation mega-projects tend to create rectangular container terminal footprints. For comparison, the terminals are

A review of the major alliances in the container shipping industry for the last quarter century. Compiled by Dr. Theo Notteboom.

A draft version of the chapter about ports and container shipping is now available. It was authored by Dr. Theo Notteboom.

Based on the index provided by UNCTAD, the map of the Liner Shipping Connectivity Index has been updated with 2020 figures. The index shows a high concentration in the distribution of port connectivity with a tier of highly connected ports.

A review of emission control areas (ECA) and their impacts on shipping. About 17% of the global container port throughput is directly within and ECA.

Updated the association between merchandise exports and container throughput with the latest data. The last few years have been particularly volatile from the historical linear progression.

A review of the forms of intermediacy and centrality that a port can be a function of.

A typology of the main port terminal facilities, mainly of function of cargo unitization and commodity type.