Abstract: This paper evaluates how port institutional reforms influenced efficiency gains between 1991 and 2004. We constructed a panel data for port ownership, corporate structure, and port inputs and outputs for 98 major world ports, and we implemented the Malmquist Productivity Index (MPI) model. The MPI provides efficiency measures for input combinations that allow for obtaining the outputs in the presence of institutional reforms, ownership changes, main agent problems, technological progress, efficient scale growth, and many other reasons for efficiency and the lack of it. The results illustrate that ownership restructuring contributed to total factor productivity gains. The restructuring induced optimized operation of container terminals, especially for large ports, as it allowed specialized private entities to concentrate on terminal operation and cargo handling services.

Abstract: The literature on container port efficiency has typically centered on ports in advanced markets or comparisons within regions. This study compares the efficiency of port operations in emerging markets (BRIC and the Next-11) with the more advanced markets (G7). We use data envelopment analysis to evaluate the container ports based on the import and export cargo volumes in 2005. Our results suggest that none of the ports in the advanced markets are role models for the field. This study provides a first step towards gaining insights into port efficiency in emerging markets.

Abstract: Methods and apparatus for determining, in a reliable manner, a port, physical location and/or device identifier, such as a MAC address, associated with a device using an IP address and for using such information, e.g., to support one or more security applications is described. Supported security applications include restricting access to services based on the location of a device seeking access to a service, determining the location of stolen devices, and verifying the location of the source of a message or other IP signal, e.g., to determine if a prisoner is contacting a monitoring service from a predetermined location.

Abstract: Techniques are described for identifying destinations in a virtual network by defining virtual entities such as a port profile as the destination for network policies, such as redirect or span to be a logical set of ports (i.e., ports belonging to a port-profile or a port group) where the members of the set of ports may be added/removed dynamically without requiring any changes to the network policy. Further, a network administrator (or other user) may predefine the destinations for a network policy even before some or all of the destinations are active on a given virtualized system. In such cases, the network policies may go into effect when the required entities become available.

Abstract: In this article we analyse the location patterns of firms that provide specialized advanced producer services (APS) to international commodity chains that move through seaports. Such activities can take place in world cities or in port cities. The analysis of APS location patterns in port cities provides a good opportunity to integrate the study of world cities into the framework of Global Production Networks. Based upon our empirical findings, we conclude that while port-related APS activities predominantly follow the world city hierarchy, a number of port cities stand out because they act as nodes in global commodity flows and as centres of advanced services related to shipping and port activities. Based on these empirical findings we address future avenues of research.

Abstract: International Trade and Shipping.- Freight Rate Mechanism.- Bulk Shipping Market.- Container Shipping Market.- Business Strategy in Shipping.- Growth of Firms.- Fleet Mix Decision.- Liner Shipping Network.- Container Transport Chain.- Intermodal Transport System.- Managing Empty Containers.- Container Transport Security.- Port Operations.- Managing Container Terminals.- Agile Port.- Port Development.

Abstract: Methods and systems for energy management are disclosed. An example system includes a first port connected to an energy storage device for bidirectional flow of energy, a second port connected to an energy source device for unidirectional flow of energy, a third port connected to a utility grid for bidirectional flow of energy, and a unified control system with control logic configured to simultaneously control energy flow between the first, second, and third ports based on at least two factors from the group consisting of: a state of charge of the energy storage device, a state of the energy source device, and a state of the utility grid. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

Abstract: Hall P. V. and Jacobs W. Shifting proximities: the maritime ports sector in an era of global supply chains, Regional Studies. Economic geographers argue that spatial and non-spatial dimensions of proximity are central to innovation and collective action. The various dimensions of proximity in relation to maritime ports are examined. Global supply chains represent a shift in organizational and cognitive proximities between seaports and among port users. In the process, extra-local relationships have become even more influential in maritime port development. As organizational proximity between dominant port users has increased through vertical and horizontal integration, territorially based institutional and social proximities, especially as regards stable and shared regulatory systems, are increasingly important as a counterbalance to ensure openness to innovation and upgrading. Hall P. V. et Jacobs W. Des proximites en pleine evolution: les ports maritimes en periode de chaines d'approvisionnement mondial...

Abstract: In one or more embodiments, an intelligent communications device is disclosed. In one embodiment, an apparatus for managing a network connection of the intelligent communications device is disclosed. The apparatus includes a communication module for monitoring the network connection through a first port that is independent of a network port. The first port is associated with a computer-executable application that is operative to detect failure of the network connection. The apparatus further includes a detection module for detecting a failure of the network connection at the network port and, in response to the failure, causing the intelligent communications device to reconnect to the network. The apparatus also includes a power supply module for iteratively power-cycling operation of the intelligent communications device in response to a failed network connection.

Abstract: Container transport has grown very rapidly worldwide and in the coming decades also a substantial, above average, growth is foreseen in this type of freight transport. Container transport is also one of the least captive cargo types, and ports and governments are responding to this with large investments to improve the market share of their port in this competitive market. The purpose of this paper is to present a new port forecasting approach that models port competition explicitly. The model follows a logistic chain approach and is designed to calculate the impacts of a wide range of policy measures (e.g. infrastructure, pricing) in the port itself, its maritime access and its hinterland connections. The functioning of the model is demonstrated for the ports of Antwerp, Rotterdam, Bremen and Hamburg.

Abstract: A method, apparatus and computer program product for providing a fast re-route of a multicast packet within a network element to an available port associated with a multi-link trunk is presented. A packet is received by a Forwarding Data Unit (FDU) in a data plane of a network element and a determination made that the packet is a multicast packet. The packet is forwarded to all egress FDUs having at least one port associated with at least one receiver of the multicast packet. A lookup is performed by each egress FDU in a synchronized local port state database to find a port for each receiver that is in an UP state. The packet is forwarded out the port to a receiver when the port is in the UP state and dropped when the port is in the DOWN state.

Abstract: An electric vehicle charging station includes a parking meter; a main display coupled to the parking meter to display information; a fast charge port and a regular charge port coupled to the parking meter to dispense electricity upon authorization; a payment reader coupled to the parking meter to accept a financial card and to enable one or more ports after card authorization; a door coupled to the charge ports, the door allowing access to the ports after authorization and closing access to the ports after charging completes, the door securing the port from unauthorized charging and to secure the ports from tampering; and an outer casing to enclose the parking meter.

Abstract: : The role of infrastructure as an engine of growth and development of coun-tries and regions is now widely accepted by scholars in the field. Among the various types of transport infrastructure, ports are considered as particularly strategic because of the in-creasing importance of maritime transport in connecting territories. In this paper we study the impact of ports on Italian provinces. To this end, we assume that sectoral employment is a function of a series of controls and of maritime traffic. We extend this framework to take account of selection bias as well, finding that the elasticity of service sector employ-ment to maritime traffic is about 0.02. Keywords : Local Development, Ports, Selection bias.jel Classification : H54, O47, C80. 1. Introduction T he provision of transport infrastructures and their relative efficiency is a fundamental factor in stimulating economic development. In par-ticular, port efficiency has been found to be of key importance in determin-ing transport costs and, hence, international trade among countries (Clark

Abstract: textThe problem of access arises in industries where inputs from monopolistic and competitive markets are complementarily needed to provide a service. In these circumstances, the firm controlling the monopolistic segment has incentives to deter competition in the competitive segments (markets) to recover profits foregone by regulation (Paredes, 1997). In the port industry, for example, a number of services need to be jointly provided to complete the logistics chain: pilotage, towage, stevedoring, storage, etc. Without any of these, cargo cannot be delivered. In ports where a terminal constitutes a natural monopoly, an integrated terminal operator has incentives to deter competition in the markets of services that are necessary to complete the logistics chain, since this would allow him to charge disproportionate prices and extract monopolistic rents. This strategy can be implemented by preferential treatment to itself or sister companies, or by restricting competitors access to the terminal. To avoid such situations from occurring, regulators have two options. They can either (i) forbid integration between terminal operators and carriers or, (ii) establish a framework under which all service providers are allowed to access and use the terminal under reasonable conditions. As suggested by Vickers (1995), the first option (vertical separation) may create non-trivial transaction costs that result in higher prices for the consumers, for which the second option (the implementation of access policies) constitutes a more desirable policy. However, formulating access policies is not an easy task. If access conditions are too high, a limited number of entrants will use the terminal, allowing providers to obtain economic rents. If conditions are too relaxed, an excess of entry may occur, thus reducing the terminal operator’s incentives to adequately maintain and expand the infrastructure (Laffont and Tirole 1994). The objective of this thesis is to analyze the characteristics of access policies implemented in the telecommunications, electricity supply, natural gas and railways industries, and to use the lessons learned from these experiences to propose a model suitable for the port industry.

Abstract: Atmospheric and water pollution are two main sources of negative environmental externalities generated by shipping. This study recognizes the negative externalities in the production of port services in East Asia by explicitly incorporating environmental impacts of shipping. Programming techniques are used to analyze 156 Origin–Destination pairs between 13 major East Asian ports, to derive the externality-augmented measures of port productivity and efficiency at the waterside. The results suggest that the inclusion of externality mitigation strategies can exert a considerable influence on efficiency performance.

Abstract: With the course of the integration of global economy accelerating, and the speedy growth of world trade, important nodes of global logistics and ports acquire more and more important status in the global economy. Ports with the development of Chinese economy and especially with the rapid growth of the foreign trade have made a great progress. This research mainly focuses on the study of the competition and cooperation between neighboring ports. Several models were developed in the research to analyze the relationship between Shanghai port and Ningbo-Zhoushan port. The research results show that the two ports enter into competition with each other. Ports are faced with competition not only from domestic ports but also from their counterparts in other countries. Therefore, Shanghai port and Ningbo-Zhoushan port should avoid competition and join hands in developing the resource reasonably in Zhoushan and achieving a regional scale economy, so that the entire ports in the region of the Yangtze River Delta can have a better competitive power.

Abstract: The port choice in the multiple-ports region is one of important issues in the international trade container transportation system. In order to reduce the total transportation cost, it is very important for shipping carriers to choose an optimal port for callings. The aim of this paper is to construct an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) model for simulating the behaviors of carriers' port choice and identifying the importance weight of every influential factor influencing carriers' port choices in the multiple-ports region. Finally, the utilization of this proposed AHP model is demonstrated with a case of five shipping companies. By the AHP model, we can obtain the importance weight of every factor influencing the decision-making of carriers' port choices. The findings might be of interest to port managers and government departments of marine transportation. Based on these findings, port managers can further make some useful operation strategies and government departments of marine transportation also can make some important port policies to improve the competitiveness of ports and to attract more containership' callings.

Abstract: Organizational Effectiveness (OE) is a rather new concept in the port business literature and not widely studied before. From the systems perspective, this concept focuses on the goals of the organization, the resources needed to achieve these goals, and the relationship between the organization and its environment. The reason behind choosing a systems approach is the significant role of seaports as open systems affected by changes and developments in world trade, supply chain and logistics trends, maritime transport, and technological developments. While seaports are multi-faceted organizations that constitute different interdependent and integrated units in their structure, they can also be regarded as the subsystems of the supply chain system. As being the social and technical systems, port organizations have unique characteristics that should be examined in detail to assess their effectiveness. To assess the effectiveness of port organizations, principally a set of effectiveness measures applicable to seaports should be determined. The main aim of this study is to assess the relative importance of the main effectiveness criteria in seaports and to determine the significance of main inputs and port subsystems which can be referred as the means to achieve effectiveness. By using the systems approach, the inputs, the processes, and the outputs of the port organizations are clearly defined with a conceptual model. Thirty-three statements have been developed under the main categories in the systems model and a two-round delphi survey is conducted, and qualitative analysis of the experts' opinions is carried out. The results of the delphi survey show that the main port inputs are port infrastructure, equipments, technology, and port labor; the major port processes are ship and cargo operations together with the logistics services, safety and security, information technologies, and marketing; and the most important effectiveness measures for the seaports are productivity, efficiency, service quality, adaptability, information and communication management, profitability, human resource quality, and customer satisfaction.

Abstract: Port competition is an important topic in transport economics. This is due not only to the large volumes of goods involved in port throughput – a direct measure of a port’s competitive strength – but also to derived effects in terms of employment and investment. Strikingly, the existing literature on the subject tends to regard ports as rather homogeneous entities. In practice, it is increasingly apparent that ports are far from homogeneous environments. This paper elaborates a methodology for analyzing relationships between port operators. Moreover, competition unfolds not only between ports, but also, primarily even, between individual production companies and service providers located in those ports or making use of them, and increasingly also between entire supply chains. The chain element that contributes most to making the chain the cheapest possible, will have the highest chance of being included. This can be derived from a preliminary analysis of port selection criteria, where cost turns out to be the most important criterion. Next to that, also other factors are shown to be possibly important, depending on the conditions and the actor. These factors will have an impact on the generalized cost, and it is shown how this cost can be decomposed in basically a time and a distance component. In order to quantify that cost, it is important to have an overview of the objectives that the different actors aim at, and of the instruments they can use to make the objectives materialize, which are therefore summarized in the paper. The last section of the paper assesses the role of a number of factors which affect port competition. The most striking ones are the changes in world trade, and market structure changes on the side of shipping companies and terminal operating companies.

Abstract: Weather or terrorism-related disasters at seaports can lead to significant economic losses from vessel and cargo delays. In times of such disasters, port capacities and optimal shipment routings would change rapidly, requiring near real-time analyses for planning response operations. To address this challenge, we offer a decision support system to help port networks analyze disaster response scenarios. As part of the model, an algorithm routes arriving ships to ports to optimize the use of network capacity with respect to ocean and inland transportation, port and inventory capital costs. To reflect changing port congestion conditions, port capacities are dynamically updated in the algorithm by regression-based parametric metamodels derived from the results of a simulation model. Demonstrating application through case studies of the North American container port network, we illustrate the magnitude of cost increases from disaster-based port shutdowns and highlight the practical need for coordinated, network-wide planning for disaster response.

Abstract: Ports, from the simple physical sea/land interface they once used to be, have successively turned into commerce and industrial centers, then into logistics and distribution platforms, and are now becoming intermodal nodes in international supply chains networks, the efficiency of which now drives trade competitiveness. With her distinguished location, logistics infrastructure and well qualified manpower, Turkey has the potential of being a hub country in her region. However, in order to achieve this potential, Turkish ports have to consider both lean and green approaches in their business strategies. Lean system design is the most important initial step for cargo handling operation in order to reach green operation. At this point, the study has aimed to analyze a Turkish container terminal both in terms of lean and green dimensions. Due to the constraints of data, however, the study has only focused on the cargo handling operations. A simulation model has been used to determine the optimum number of container handling equipment to increase the lean capabilities of a Turkish port. Besides, the environmental damage caused by handling equipment in cargo handling operations has been discussed through the study, and the optimal number of equipment minimizing the environment damage has been reached.

Abstract: This research examines the relative efficiency of 11 major Chinese ports by using an innovative adopted version of Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). DEA is a non-parametric approach to weigh the inputs/outputs and measure the relative efficiency of decision-making units. This paper adopts an output-oriented version of DEA based on financial ratios in which no inputs are utilized. The new adopted DEA model provides a rounded judgement on port efficiency taking into consideration multiple financial ratios simultaneously and combining them into a single measure of efficiency. The mathematical model is solved for every port, and the relative efficiency of each port is determined. The results of DEA show that the higher a port's efficiency ratio in relation to the corresponding ratio of another port, the higher the efficiency of this port. Finally, suggestions based on the data analysis are provided for managerial decision makers to improve the areas needed for port operating efficiency.

Abstract: This article summarizes the results of a study of the Netherlands Institute for Transport Policy Analysis (KiM) on costs and benefits of cooperation between port authorities (Wortelboer en Kolkman, Samenwerking tussen Zeehavens, December 2008). The article elaborates on the question whether, and if so, how, cooperation between port authorities can contribute to our societal welfare and what role the national government can play in promoting this cooperation.

Abstract: Two or more network devices can automatically coordinate to aggregate ports into virtual port channels. Ports of the port channel can be automatically assigned priorities to achieve about an equal distribution of active links across the two or more network devices.

Abstract: A system and method for providing network and port address translation is provided. A global IP address and a block (chunk) of ports are allocated for each mobile subscriber (MS) on first data connection. Subsequent data connections from the same MS are assigned the same IP address and a new port from this block. The mapping information is communicated, processed, and stored once for the complete block, instead of for every new data connection. This process reduces processing, communication, and storage requirements.

Abstract: The development of new ports in China and the enhancement of port facilities in Korea will force major Japanese ports, which were the region's hub ports until the 1980s, to become local feeder ports for entry into East Asia. To consider the integration of cargo flow and liner networks, such Japanese ports need to collaborate with each other rather than compete with neighboring ports on an individual basis. Ports located on Tokyo and Osaka Bays started to share these concerns and jointly sought effective measures. It was suggested that they could advance their collaboration and be managed by a single port authority to strengthen their respective positions. This paper focuses on a strategy for container ports, especially those in Japan, for survival during the next stage under conditions of harsh competition.