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Article
Publication date: 9 June 2021

Tomoya Kawasaki, Takuma Matsuda, Yui-yip Lau and Xiaowen Fu

In the maritime industry, it is vital to have a reliable forecast of container shipping demand. Although indicators of economic conditions have been used in modeling container

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Abstract

Purpose

In the maritime industry, it is vital to have a reliable forecast of container shipping demand. Although indicators of economic conditions have been used in modeling container shipping demand on major routes such as those from East Asia to the USA, the duration of such indicators’ effects on container movement demand have not been systematically examined. To bridge this gap in research, this study aims to identify the important US economic indicators that significantly affect the volume of container movements and empirically reveal the duration of such impacts.

Design/methodology/approach

The durability of economic indicators on container movements is identified by a vector autoregression (VAR) model using monthly-based time-series data. In the VAR model, this paper can analyze the effect of economic indicators at t-k on container movement at time t. In the model, this paper considers nine US economic indicators as explanatory variables that are likely to affect container movements. Time-series data are used for 228 months from January 2001 to December 2019.

Findings

In the mainland China route, “building permission” receives high impact and has a duration of 14 months, reflecting the fact that China exports a high volume of housing-related goods to the USA. Regarding the South Korea and Japan routes, where high volumes of machinery goods are exported to the USA, the “index of industrial production” receives a high impact with 11 and 13 months’ duration, respectively. On the Taiwan route, as several types of goods are transported with significant shares, “building permits” and “index of industrial production” have important effects.

Originality/value

Freight demand forecasting for bulk cargo is a popular research field because of the public availability of several time-series data. However, no study to date has measured the impact and durability of economic indicators on container movement. To bridge the gap in the literature in terms of the impact of economic indicators and their durability, this paper developed a time-series model of the container movement from East Asia to the USA.

Details

Maritime Business Review, vol. 7 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2397-3757

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 8 January 2020

Sonali Shankar, P. Vigneswara Ilavarasan, Sushil Punia and Surya Prakash Singh

Better forecasting always leads to better management and planning of the operations. The container throughput data are complex and often have multiple seasonality. This makes it…

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Abstract

Purpose

Better forecasting always leads to better management and planning of the operations. The container throughput data are complex and often have multiple seasonality. This makes it difficult to forecast accurately. The purpose of this paper is to forecast container throughput using deep learning methods and benchmark its performance over other traditional time-series methods.

Design/methodology/approach

In this study, long short-term memory (LSTM) networks are implemented to forecast container throughput. The container throughput data of the Port of Singapore are used for empirical analysis. The forecasting performance of the LSTM model is compared with seven different time-series forecasting methods, namely, autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA), simple exponential smoothing, Holt–Winter’s, error-trend-seasonality, trigonometric regressors (TBATS), neural network (NN) and ARIMA + NN. The relative error matrix is used to analyze the performance of the different models with respect to bias, accuracy and uncertainty.

Findings

The results showed that LSTM outperformed all other benchmark methods. From a statistical perspective, the Diebold–Mariano test is also conducted to further substantiate better forecasting performance of LSTM over other counterpart methods.

Originality/value

The proposed study is a contribution to the literature on the container throughput forecasting and adds value to the supply chain theory of forecasting. Second, this study explained the architecture of the deep-learning-based LSTM method and discussed in detail the steps to implement it.

Details

Industrial Management & Data Systems, vol. 120 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0263-5577

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 22 June 2021

Sonali Shankar, Sushil Punia and P. Vigneswara Ilavarasan

Container throughput forecasting plays a pivotal role in strategic, tactical and operational level decision-making. The determination and analysis of the influencing factors of…

Abstract

Purpose

Container throughput forecasting plays a pivotal role in strategic, tactical and operational level decision-making. The determination and analysis of the influencing factors of container throughput are observed to enhance the predicting accuracy. Therefore, for effective port planning and management, this study employs a deep learning-based method to forecast the container throughput while considering the influence of economic, environmental and social factors on throughput forecasting.

Design/methodology/approach

A novel multivariate container throughput forecasting method is proposed using long short-term memory network (LSTM). The external factors influencing container throughput, delineated using triple bottom line, are considered as an input to the forecasting method. The principal component analysis (PCA) is employed to reduce the redundancy of the input variables. The container throughput data of the Port of Los Angeles (PLA) is considered for empirical analysis. The forecasting accuracy of the proposed method is measured via an error matrix. The accuracy of the results is further substantiated by the Diebold-Mariano statistical test.

Findings

The result of the proposed method is benchmarked with vector autoregression (VAR), autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMAX) and LSTM. It is observed that the proposed method outperforms other counterpart methods. Though PCA was not an integral part of the forecasting process, it facilitated the prediction by means of “less data, more accuracy.”

Originality/value

A novel deep learning-based forecasting method is proposed to predict container throughput using a hybridized autoregressive integrated moving average with external factors model and long short-term memory network (ARIMAX-LSTM).

Details

Industrial Management & Data Systems, vol. 121 no. 10
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0263-5577

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 30 January 2004

Jess Browning and Seung-Hee Lee

The Incheon Region has numerous assets that fall within a Pentaport model.' These include the Incheon International Airport, the Port of Incheon, a coastal industrial park, free…

Abstract

The Incheon Region has numerous assets that fall within a Pentaport model.' These include the Incheon International Airport, the Port of Incheon, a coastal industrial park, free economic zones, a leisure port, and Songdo new town designed to be the future Silicon Valley of Korea. This paper looks at how Northeast Asia trade flows between China and Korea might be enhanced by application of the Pentaport model in making the Incheon region a North East Asian Hub. It looks also at their trade and logistics systems as well as their water borne commerce. It proposes an integrated transportation system for the Yellow Sea Region being beneficial to the economies of the Northeast Asia. It also stresses that innovative technologies for ships, terminals and cargo handling systems should be introduced to develop a competitive short sea shipping system in the region and cooperation among the regional countries will be essential to achieve the final goal. The potential of methods of container shipping is discussed as it might apply to short sea shipping in the Yellow Sea Region that could greatly facilitate Incheon's situation with respect to the broader region in application of the Pentaport model.

Details

Journal of International Logistics and Trade, vol. 1 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1738-2122

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 31 December 2003

Jess Browning

In the 21st Century, a region 's growth and prosperity will depend upon its intermodal transportation infrastructure and its ability to efficiently move goods, materials, and…

Abstract

In the 21st Century, a region 's growth and prosperity will depend upon its intermodal transportation infrastructure and its ability to efficiently move goods, materials, and people within the system whether it be from origin to destination; from supplier to customer through the various levels of the supply-chain; or from point to point within the system. Planning for the future focuses on improving a region 's intermodal transportation system efficiencies and infrastructure, its connection to other economies, and on the development of logistics institutions and facilities.

With China 's rapidly developing economy and society, record numbers of new modern facilities such as airports, ports, highways, logistics parks and warehouses are being built. Along with this, companies have made extensive investments in information technologies and software to support the tremendous growth that has taken place in the logistics industry. The development and improvement of China's historic inland water transport system is essential to their continued future growth and prosperity. In Korea, past and present National Governments have emphasized the importance of developing a North East Asian Logistics and Business Hub in their region and have worked on strategies, which include water transport, as part of an important national agenda to that end.

This article looks at how trade flows in the Yangtze and Yellow Sea Regions and between China and South Korea might be enhanced by application of improved shipping methods in marine commerce that will promote economic growth in the region. The application of logistics practices and use of barges is explored for the movement of containers on inland and coastal waterways as well as in short sea shipping which could greatly facilitate the region 's situation with respect to future economic growth.

Details

Journal of International Logistics and Trade, vol. 1 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1738-2122

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 30 January 2005

Jess Browning

The Yellow Sea region is becoming an engine of economic growth for Northeast Asia. Its growth and prosperity will depend upon how well it is able to focus on improving the…

Abstract

The Yellow Sea region is becoming an engine of economic growth for Northeast Asia. Its growth and prosperity will depend upon how well it is able to focus on improving the efficiencies of its intermodal transportation system, infrastructure, its connection to other economies and how the system relates to logistics and supply-chain management. The region is moving towards becoming a major world economic hub and the Yellow Sea needs an innovative transportation system to be developed to support the activity that seems destined to take place. This article looks at innovative technologies that might be introduced to develop a more competitive coastal shipping system in the region. Innovations in logistics and container shipping are discussed that could greatly facilitate Incheon’s situation with respect to the broader region.

Details

Journal of International Logistics and Trade, vol. 3 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1738-2122

Keywords

Content available

Abstract

Details

Maritime Business Review, vol. 7 no. 4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2397-3757

Article
Publication date: 14 July 2021

Maryam Bahrami, Mehdi Khashei and Atefeh Amindoust

The purpose of this paper, because of the complexity of demand time series and the need to construct a more accurate hybrid model that can model all relationships in data, is to…

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper, because of the complexity of demand time series and the need to construct a more accurate hybrid model that can model all relationships in data, is to propose a parallel-series hybridization of seasonal neural networks and statistical models for demand time series forecasting.

Design/methodology/approach

The main idea of proposed model is centered around combining parallel and series hybrid methodologies to use the benefit of unique advantages of both hybrid strategies as well as intelligent and classic seasonal time series models simultaneously for achieving results that are more accurate for the first time. In the proposed model, in contrast of traditional parallel and series hybrid strategies, it can be generally shown that the performance of the proposed model will not be worse than components.

Findings

Empirical results of forecasting two well-known seasonal time series data sets, including the total production value of the Taiwan machinery industry and the sales volume of soft drinks, indicate that the proposed model can effectively improve the forecasting accuracy achieved by either of their components used in isolation. In addition, the proposed model can achieve more accurate results than parallel and series hybrid model with same components. Therefore, the proposed model can be used as an appropriate alternative model for seasonal time series forecasting, especially when higher forecasting accuracy is needed.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, the proposed model, for first time and in contrast of traditional parallel and series hybrid strategies, is developed.

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 31 December 2003

P.W. de Langen

This paper analyses the determinants of transport demand for maritime container transport. Such an analysis is relevant, among others for port planning, since port expansion plans…

Abstract

This paper analyses the determinants of transport demand for maritime container transport. Such an analysis is relevant, among others for port planning, since port expansion plans are based on forecasts. Inevitably, different opinions about the future development of (container) transport flows exist, and decisionmakers are confronted with uncertainty. This paper analyses the variables of container transport demand. Seven variables are identified, four related to the overall volume of trade and international transport flows (the GDP, export quote of economies, the direction of trade and the value density of trade) and three related to the containerised proportion of transport flows (the containerisable share of transport flows, the containerisation rate and the share of shipping in international trade). The rise of containerised transport flows from 1980 to 1995 is based on different 'underlying factors'. The future development of the variables is highly uncertain, and a 'extrapolation' of the high growth rates of the past, is not likely to lead to a good forecast for the future. Thus, decision-makers confronted with the uncertainty about future trade flows, should try to maximise flexibility in port planning.

Details

Journal of International Logistics and Trade, vol. 1 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1738-2122

Content available
Article
Publication date: 25 May 2018

Veerachai Gosasang, Tsz Leung Yip and Watcharavee Chandraprakaikul

This paper aims to forecast inbound and outbound container throughput for Bangkok Port to 2041 and uses the results to inform the future planning and management of the port’s…

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to forecast inbound and outbound container throughput for Bangkok Port to 2041 and uses the results to inform the future planning and management of the port’s container terminal.

Design/methodology/approach

The data used cover a period of 16 years (192 months of observations). Data sources include the Bank of Thailand and the Energy Policy and Planning Office. Cause-and-effect forecasting is adopted for predicting future container throughput by using a vector error correction model (VECM).

Findings

Forecasting future container throughput in Bangkok Port will benefit port planning. Various economic factors affect the volume of both inbound and outbound containers through the port. Three cases (scenarios) of container terminal expansion are analyzed and assessed, on the basis of which an optimal scenario is identified.

Research limitations/implications

The economic characteristics of Thailand differ from those of other countries/jurisdictions, such as the USA, the EU, Japan, China, Malaysia and Indonesia, and optimal terminal expansion scenarios may therefore differ from that identified in this study. In addition, six particular countries/jurisdictions are the dominant trading partners of Thailand, but these main trading partners may change in the future.

Originality/value

There are only two major projects that have forecast container throughput volumes for Bangkok Port. The first project, by the Japan International Cooperation Agency, applied both the trend of cargo volumes and the relationship of volumes with economic indices such as population and gross domestic product. The second project, by the Port Authority of Thailand, applied a moving average method to forecast the number of containers. Other authors have used time-series forecasting. Here, the authors apply a VECM to forecast the future container throughput of Bangkok Port.

Details

Maritime Business Review, vol. 3 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2397-3757

Keywords

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