THE DEVELOPMENT OF A CONTAINER PORT SELECTION INDEX IN EAST MEDITERRANEAN USING A FUZZY AHP APPROACH

Abstract

Competition between ports receiving container ships has started to attract more clients such as freight forwarders, importers, exporters, shipping lines, ship owners and logistics service providers.  Container terminals play a substantial role in global cargo transportation by serving as an intermodal between the miritime entities and by a variety of carriers.  This paper aims to investigate those criteria that can be applied by port clients (shipping lines only) when they select their calling ports.  A questionnaire has been developed to indentify those criteria that are currently applied by shipping lines in the container market in calling at seven ports located in the East Mediterranean region.  Data and answer were collected for this questionnare and were then compared with those criteria discussed in the available literature.  Several interviews have been conducted with different shipping lines working in the east Mediterranean region in order to select the most important criteria from their perspective.  The most important criteria identified by shipping lines are grouped into seven categories.  The Fuzzy AHP approach was applied to weight each criterion.  The results were distributed again in a second questionnaire to the experts and academics in the field, to highlight the basic criteria from their perspective.  Finally, the results of both questionnaires were given weight for each criterion through the AHP method of analysis and K-firm concentration ratio.  A ranking index of ports was developed based on the criteria identified by the shipping lines.  It is concluded that the port charges criteria has the highest degree of importance as perceived by the shipping lines served by the East Mediterranean Container market.