DYNA JOURNAL ENGINEERING

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Article type:

ARTICULO DE INVESTIGACION / RESEARCH ARTICLE

Section:

RESEARCH ARTICLES

Explicit development orientations of ports are critical to promoting port clusters from chaotic competitions to a hierarchical collaborative development. To investigate the development orientation and hierarchies of coastal ports in Mainland China, a visibility graph network was constructed in this study for a time series analysis of China's port throughputs from 2000 to 2020. In this model, the four throughput indexes of cargo, domestic trade cargo, foreign trade cargo, and container were used to measure the scale of ports. The topological structural features of the throughput network of ports, including its average degree, diameter, and average clustering coefficient, were calculated. The ports were then divided into four types based on their network characteristics. Results show that the throughput time series network of coastal ports in Mainland China has an obvious hierarchical structure and generally has the characteristics of small-world networks. These ports are closely connected and have a strong transshipment capacity. However, an "absolute center" does not exist in this network, and these ports are in a state of disorderly and chaotic competition with serious homogenization. The proposed model provides an appropriate method for the future planning and design of port clusters.

Keywords: Port throughput, Throughput characteristics, Visibility graph, Time series complex networks, Clustering analysis