Analysis of topology and routing strategy of container shipping network on “Maritime Silk Road”

doi:10.1016/j.suscom.2018.11.002

Sustainable Computing: Informatics and Systems

Volume 21, March 2019, Pages 72-79

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.suscom.2018.11.002 Get rights and content

Highlights

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This work analyzes the topological properties of the "Maritime Silk Road" shipping network, and calculates that the network belongs to the BA network.
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The optimal parameter configuration of "Maritime Silk Road" shipping network under different conditions is analyzed through experiments.
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The study analyzes the ways to improve "Maritime Silk Road" shipping network.

Abstract

In this paper, 706 ports and 2306 container liner routes along the Maritime Silk Road from June to December in 2017 were selected as the sample data of the "Maritime Silk Road" container shipping network. By constructing the network feature set to determine the type of network, argue that the "Maritime Silk Road" shipping network belongs to the scale network and analyze its topological characteristics. By calculating the power law exponent of the network degree distribution, it is concluded that the network belongs to the Barabási-Albert (BA) network. Based on the theory of BA scale network performance improvement, the core parameters of the network are optimized by designing the simulation experiment under different scenarios, and the optimal strategy of improving the capacity of the network is explored. The experimental results show that the congestion of the Maritime Silk Road network is affected by the network node capacity and the network routing strategy. There are different optimal parameter configurations under different conditions. The research results are importance for the "Maritime Silk Road" shipping network’s development.

Introduction

As an important part of "the Belt and Road" Initiative in China, and with its cores being the maritime shipping network composed of ports and routes, the "Maritime Silk Road" has become an important passage [16] for communication between China and countries along the road. Wang et al pointed out that the maritime shipping network is a typical complex network mainly composed of ports, routes, ships and other main elements [20]. In recent years, with the proposal of small-world network and the scale-free network put forward by previous studies [14,24], complex network theory has become one of the hot tools adopted for studying complex systems. Complex network theory transfers all elements of a real system and the relation between the elements into the nodes and edges between of the nodes in the network, describes the relations of all parts in the system in the form of network, emphasizes the topological property of the system, and reveals the nature and evolution mechanism of the existing system.

Complex networks have been successfully applied to communication and transportation networks, such as aviation network [1,2,7,13], highway network [4,5,21], railway network [6,12,15], and emergency logistics networks [39], but the results in the aspect of water transportation network are fewer. Kaluza et al pointed out that complex network theory can be applied to container shipping network [10], which provided a brand-new research tool for the dynamics problem of port shipping system. The studies on container shipping network from the perspective of complex network have become a new research trend. At present, its main achievements focus on two aspects: firstly, it is the analysis on the complexity of shipping network. Wei [25] and Hu [8] pointed out that shipping network is characterized by complexity and explained the reason why shipping network have complexity. By taking Maritime Silk Road shipping network in Southeast Asia as the object, it is analyzed that the overall network spatial pattern is in “T” structure, which has the scale-free property and small-world network, and the distribution of the ports on Maritime Silk Road in Southeast Asia region shows clear clustering agglomeration; Li et al studied the centrality of shipping line network and drew out the evolutionary trend of the centrality of global shipping areas [11]. Secondly, in terms of performance optimization of shipping network, Tran and Haasis made a summary and research on the optimization of shipping network [18]. They pointed out that the research trend of optimization of container network is mainly divided into three directions, namely, container routing, fleet management and route path design; Studies analyzed the connectivity of container shipping network and calculated the relation between the connectivity and network performance of the shipping network through the quantitative model [3,9,17]. They pointed out that hub ports in the minority have a key function to the connectivity of the shipping network; Wang and Meng proposed a mixed integer linear programming model for the issue of optimization of rotation direction of port and established a multi-commodity network flow model at minimum cost [22]. The results show that the costs can be effectively reduced through optimizing the rotation direction of port; Tsiotas and Polyzos, by taking Greek port as the case, applied the analysis method for complex network to the national marine network research, and provided a new opinion of the Greek transport policies for the policy makers [19].

To sum up, the research results at present mainly focus on the complexity studies and evolution trend analysis of shipping network, but the research results in terms of performance improvement and organizational optimization of such a complex system like the shipping network are lacking. Therefore, relying on the complex network theory and taking "Maritime Silk Road" container shipping network as the object, this paper studies the topological property of the container shipping network and its upgrade strategy to support the implementation of the great “the Belt and Road” Initiative in China.

Section snippets

Establishment of "Maritime Silk Road" shipping network

Ports, routes and ships are the basic constitutive elements of the shipping network as an important component of communication and transportation network. The ports along the "Maritime Silk Road" constitute the sets of nodes in network, the routes between the ports constitute the edges of the network, and the ships are taken as the carriers of containers. "Maritime Silk Road" shipping network is defined as: $G (V, E)$ In which: V={v_i|i = 1, 2, …, N} is the set of the port nodes in shipping network,

Common network models and main characteristics

With the breakthrough development of network theory, the evaluation method system of network analysis is constantly enriching and perfecting, which provides a more scientific analysis method for the evaluation of "Maritime Silk Road" shipping network. The main network models and their characteristics at present are shown as Table 1.

It can be seen from Table 1 that, the types of the network can be judged through analyzing the major characteristics of the network, i.e., degree distribution, mean

Simulating "Maritime Silk Road" shipping network

"BA Scale-Free" property of "Maritime Silk Road" shipping network shows that the network has a small number of important nodes [[26], [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32], [33],40], i.e., container hub ports. The ports directly connected to these hub ports are in large quantity, while most of the other ports are only connected to a small number of ports. Based on BA scale-free network performance improvement theory, the optimization of BA scale-free network performance is carried out mainly in

Discussion

In the previous simulation experiments which contains three experiment groups with a total number of fifteen times, we have explored that when the container generation quantity G is constant, the node processing capacity C changes, how does different routing policy parameters α affect the congestion degree η, and have gotten the best optimal routing policy parameter under different node processing capacity C. How does the node processing capacity C affect the congestion degree η if G is

Conclusion

In this paper, we take "Maritime Silk Road" container shipping network as the research object, by constructing the network feature set and the network is calculated, the network has small world and scale-free properties, and the distribution of the degree value of the network obey the power-law distribution which index is -3. The "Maritime Silk Road" shipping network belonging to the BA complex network conclusion.

Based on performance optimization theory of "Scale-Free Network", simulation

Acknowledgment

Research for this paper was supported by “<GS1>the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universityes<GS1>” (<GN1>2019B12614<GN1>), and funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 41401120, 51009060 and 50909042) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Project No. 2014B00214<GN3><GN3>2014B00214). The authors thank every teacher of research institute, for their comments and suggestions.

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Analysis of topology and routing strategy of container shipping network on “Maritime Silk Road”

Highlights

Abstract

Introduction

Section snippets

Establishment of "Maritime Silk Road" shipping network

Common network models and main characteristics

Simulating "Maritime Silk Road" shipping network

Discussion

Conclusion

Acknowledgment

Physica A: Stat. Mech. Appl.

Physica A: Stat. Mech. Appl.

Transp. Res. Part E: Logist. Transp. Rev.

Geo J.

Transp. Res. Part C: Emerg. Technol.

Transp. Policy

Transp. Res. Part B: Methodol.

IEEE Trans. Ind. Inf.

Results Phys.

Inf. Sci.

Physica A: Stat. Mech. Appl.

The architecture of complex weighted networks

Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. U. S. A.

A new connectivity index for container ports

Maritime Econ. Logist.

Topological patterns in street networks of self-organized urban settlements

Eur. Phys. J. B-Condens. Matter Complex Syst.

Spatial street network and urban routes around the modernist boulevard in Bucharest

A fault tolerance optimization model of the China railway geographic network topological structure

Discrete Dyn. Nat. Soc.

Modeling the world-wide airport network

Eur. Phys. J. B-Condens. Matter Complex

The complex network of global cargo ship movements

J. R. Soc. Interface

Complex network analysis of Pakistan railways

Discrete Dyn. Nat. Soc.

Internet: diameter of the world-wide web

Nature