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Disruptions at ports may destroy the planned ship schedules profoundly, which is an imperative operation problem that shipping companies need to overcome. This paper attempts to help shipping companies cope with port disruptions through recovery scheduling.

This paper studies the ship coping strategies for the port disruptions caused by severe weather. A novel mixed-integer nonlinear programming model is proposed to solve the ship schedule recovery problem (SSRP). A distributionally robust mean conditional value-at-risk (CVaR) optimization model was constructed to handle the SSRP with port disruption uncertainties, for which we derive tractable counterparts under the polyhedral ambiguity sets.

The results show that the size of ambiguity set, confidence level and risk-aversion parameter can significantly affect the optimal values, decision-makers should choose a reasonable parameter combination. Besides, sailing speed adjustment and handling rate adjustment are effective strategies in SSRP but may not be sufficient to recover the schedule; therefore, port skipping and swapping are necessary when multiple or longer disruptions occur at ports.

Since the port disruption is difficult to forecast, we attempt to take the uncertainties into account to achieve more meaningful results. To the best of our knowledge, there is barely a research study focusing on the uncertain port disruptions in the SSRP. Moreover, this is the first paper that applies distributionally robust optimization (DRO) to deal with uncertain port disruptions through the equivalent counterpart of DRO with polyhedral ambiguity set, in which a robust mean-CVaR optimization formulation is adopted as the objective function for a trade-off between the expected total costs and the risk.

Severe disruptions to maritime supply chains, including port closures, congestion and shortages in shipping capacity, have occurred during the COVID-19 pandemic. This paper’s purpose is to explore flexibility-based countermeasures that enable actors in maritime supply chains to mitigate the effects of disruptions with different characteristics.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with shipping lines, shippers, forwarders and ports. Data on the COVID-19 pandemic's effects and countermeasures were collected and compared with data regarding the 2016–2017 Gothenburg port conflict.

Spatial, capacity, service and temporal flexibility emerged as the primary countermeasures, whilst important characteristics of disruptions were geographical spread, duration, uncertainty, criticality, the element of surprise and intensity. Spatial flexibility was exercised in both disruptions by switching to alternative ports. During the COVID-19 pandemic, ensuring capacity flexibility included first removing and then adding vessels. Shipping lines exercising service flexibility prioritised certain cargo, which made the spot market uncertain and reduced flexibility for forwarders, importers and exporters that changed carriers or traffic modes. Experience with disruptions meant less surprise and better preparation for spatial flexibility.

Understanding how actors in maritime supply chains exercise flexibility-based countermeasures amid disruptions with different characteristics can support preparedness for coming disruptions.

Comparing flexibility-based measures in a pandemic versus port conflict provides insights into the important characteristics of disruptions and the relevance of mitigation strategies. The resilience of maritime supply chains, although underexamined compared with manufacturing supply chains, is essential for maintaining global supply chain flows.

The European Union's Emissions Trading System (EU ETS), which is already one of the EU's most impactful instruments for reducing greenhouse gases (GHGs), will soon include the maritime transport industry. Although ports are this industry's most environmental-friendly component, there are still some barriers to including ports in the system. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to identify these barriers and to reveal the barriers' interrelationships.

The study was conducted by identifying barriers from a literature review before analyzing the barriers with the Fuzzy DEMATEL method. Finally, based on the Complex Adaptive System Approach, various solutions are proposed to overcome these barriers.

The identified barriers were grouped into cause-and-effect groups. Two barriers, namely long payback period and high investment costs, were evaluated as triggers of the model while the others were more sensitive to the model.

This study only includes the perceptions of green certificated ports in Türkiye. The results revealed an expectation that elimination of financial concerns will alleviate other barriers to including ports in the system. The study's findings can guide port managers on the integration of the managers' processes into the system.

This study provides novel findings regarding the relationships between barriers hindering ports from involvement in the EU ETS.

This study aims to further develop the CLC stage/path’s identification model that distinguishes between path’s emergence (emergence stage), path’s development (growth stage), path’s sustainment (maturity stage), path’s decline (decline stage) and path’s transformation (renewal stage), and by applying it, define the current stage/path of the Demarcated Douro Region (DDR) cluster. The Port wine industry, which is the dominant industry of the DDR cluster, is at the maturity/decline stage – is the same for the cluster itself?

It is a case study with a longitudinal perspective based on the analysis of the dynamics of the parameters of cluster evolution using available secondary sources (cluster identity/brand; number of firms; number of employees; network; innovation; policies and regulations; and external markets – exports), especially addressing the past decade, that represent the stage of maturity/decline of the cluster’s dominant Port wine industry.

The conclusion is that since the 1990s the Demarcated Douro Region has gone through a “path transformation” where during the following 20 years new “anchors” for the cluster were gradually introduced, such as Doc Douro Wines, new forms of consumption of Port wine, tourism and olive oil. Since 2010 the cluster has entered a growth stage/(new) path’s development, where these “anchors” are in steady growth. The Douro brand is becoming more internationally recognized and established, the number of firms and employees is increasing, the network is restructuring with the creation of cluster-specific official institutions, innovation is especially reflected with increasing heterogeneity through diversification of the clusters into new activities and regulations and policies are supportive for expansion – all these parameters are indicating the rise of the new cycle for the cluster. Thus, the DDR cluster represents an attractive business environment and requires attention from regional policymakers to support the cluster’s development. Especially institutions have been highlighted as internal factors driving clusters growth, European integration as an external factor and firms’ strategies of diversification and internationalization as an appropriate de-locking mechanism for new path’s development.

This research contributes to the CLC theory by further developing and applying a CLC stage/path identification model. It provides a better understanding of the dynamics of the DDR cluster that diverge from its dominant industry life cycle, which is relevant for regional policies and firms’ strategies. This study has its limitations. It provides an exploratory application of the theoretical framework proposed, and consequently, no general conclusions are possible yet. More empirical studies with different clusters in different stages are necessary to test the framework.

These findings are useful to policymakers when designing their policies for cluster development but also for clusters’ entities and actors when making their strategic decisions as it allows based on the verification of the established parameter of CLC to identify its current stage/path of development.

The paper presents a theoretically grounded model for CLC identification and for the first time to the best of the authors’ knowledge applies it to a cluster case – the DDR cluster. This case applies the proposed model and illustrates its usefulness. The model provides the tools for a better understanding of cluster dynamics.

This paper aims to elucidate the responsiveness of China’s judicial system in addressing the challenges of identifying online illegal fund-raising crimes that have emerged in recent years. This study systematically evaluates the efficacy and potential pitfalls of legal guidelines contained in judicial interpretations, such as holistic determination, sampling verification and presumption of the nature of funds. In addition, the research endeavors to propose pertinent recommendations for refining the existing judicial rules.

This research mainly uses a doctrinal methodology, focusing on the principal judicial interpretations formulated by the Supreme People’s Court and other central judicial entities in China. The scope encompasses the realm of online illegal fund-raising crimes as well as other cybercrimes. The analytical framework involves a comprehensive examination of these authoritative judicial documents, coupled with a theoretical and critical analysis of relevant academic materials.

This research underscores that while judicial interpretations serve as an effective legal strategy to confront the challenges posed by online illegal fund-raising crimes, their implementation introduces a nuanced landscape. These legal guidelines, often emanating from diverse judicial departments and tackling specific issues, carry the inherent risk of giving rise to new complexities and fostering inconsistency. Judicial authorities shall exercise prudence in both the formulation and application of these guidelines, ensuring their harmonization with existing legal norms and fundamental legal principles.

This research constitutes a critical and comprehensive examination of judicial interpretations in China pertaining to online illegal fund-raising crimes. It offers valuable insights into the country’s judicial interpretation system and its legal responses to financial crimes. The paper serves as a valuable resource for academics, law enforcement professionals, policymakers, legislators and researchers.

One of the best ways to assist China is through infrastructure investment. China might become more resilient to natural calamities by pouring more money into its transport network. Analyzing the relationship between China's degree of planned expansion and the country's current network of transport hubs can help with city development estimates. A wide range of factors were taken into consideration while evaluating China's dominance and the caliber of its transportation infrastructure. Using a geographical autocorrelation model and a coupling coordination model, the dynamic link between China's adaptability and the caliber of its transportation infrastructure is examined.

China's northwest is underdeveloped in comparison to the southeast, which has a high level of resilience and development of its transportation infrastructure. The relationship between the levels of resilience upheld by China's transport infrastructure is suggested to be coordinated.

The authors find a positive geographical autocorrelation between the degree of coupling coordination and the degree of agglomeration, despite the fact that the distance between cities increases with time. They now believe that there is a connection between an area's population density and the degree of interspousal cooperation within. The consequence is an improvement in both national security and economic prosperity. The facilities for disaster management and transportation in China have received several proposals for improvement.

The authors' Practical Implications suggests that scale inefficiency is a major contributor to the relatively poor efficiency of China's primary inland river ports. Different types of inland river ports may have vastly different water system efficiencies. Input and output congestion at China's important interior river ports has reached 51%, making it very clear that massive amounts of valuable port resources are being wasted.

Many variables, such as climate and human error, affect the total amount of goods that can be moved via inner river ports. Ports situated either higher up or lower down the same canal may perform better or worse, respectively, depending on the circumstances.

This present study uses political, economic, social, technological, legal and environmental (PESTLE) analysis and the strategic management theory to examine how external factors, namely the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic, the industrial revolution (IR) 4.0 technologies, the fuel price crisis and Sultanate of Oman Logistics Strategy (SOLS) 2040, affect the performance of container terminals in Oman.

A hybrid decision-making method that combined the analytical hierarchy process technique and Bayesian network model was used to achieve the objective of the present study.

The COVID-19 pandemic (54.60%) most significantly affected the performance of container terminals in Oman, followed by IR 4.0 technologies (19.66%), SOLS (17.00%) and fuel price crisis (8.74%). Container terminals in Oman were also found to perform “moderately,” considering the uncertainty of external factors.

This study enriches existing literature by using PESTLE analysis to assess the impact of the external business environment on firm performance in the context of the maritime industry as well as highlights how challenging external environmental factors affect the performance of container terminals in Oman.

This study contributes to developing novel study models and determining the performance level of container terminals in Oman considering integrated uncertainties and external factors such as the COVID-19 pandemic, IR 4.0 technologies, the SOLS 2040 and the fuel price crisis.

This paper focusses on the aftermath of disruptions and the importance of the two largest canals (Suez and Panama), commenting on how during the pandemic the canal fees were lowered. Considering the ongoing efforts to decarbonize shipping, some of the ongoing disruptions will help reach these objectives faster.

Following a literature review of route choice in shipping, and a presentation of significant disruptions in recent years, the author deploys a simplified fuel consumption model and conduct case study analyses to compare different routes environmentally and economically.

The results explain why at times of low fuel prices as in 2020, canals provided discounts to entice ship operators to keep transiting these, instead of opting for longer routes. Considering the ongoing repercussions of the pandemic in supply chains, as well as the potential introduction of market-based measures in shipping, the value of transiting canals will be much higher in the coming years.

The main limitation in this work is that the author used the publicly available information on canal tolls, for the different ship types examined.

The envisioned model is simple, and it can be readily used for any ship and route (port to port) combination available, if ship data are available to researchers.

It is possible that canal tolls will increase, to account for the additional environmental benefits brought to ship operators.

The methodology is simple and transferable, and the author proposes several interesting research questions for follow-up work.

Urban mobility has substantially evolved in several western countries, shifting from interest in road expansion strategies to cater motorized movement to the emphasis on sustainable mobility. This is, however, not the case in several developing countries that still try to accommodate vehicular flows in inner historic cities. This paper aims at providing an assessment framework that helps in evaluating the effect of streetscape development on the walking and cycling environment in historic contexts.

This research follows a two-phase methodology. Phase 1 is the investigation of the literature review including the streetscape design, Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and indicators for the assessment of walking and cycling environment. This phase results in developing a set of indicators for the assessment. Phase 2 is the case study including, methods, steps and results of the assessment based on the output of Phase 1. This phase concludes with a discussion on the challenges and recommendations for the enhancement.

The streetscape development in Afrang was insufficient and negatively affected the walking and cycling environment. It was motorized-oriented, instead of enhancing green mobility. The interventions led to more crowds, safety risks and less pleasant experience. Moreover, the car users' experience was enhanced initially; however, the traffic situation did not persist. A sustainable urban mobility approach is necessary to be implemented with consideration to the global level and the relation to SDGs.

There is a gap in tackling the research problem both within the context of Port Said in particular and Egyptian context in general. Local authorities need a clear structured methodology to follow in the development of the streetscape. The assessment indicators gathered can be the basis for evaluating future plans.

This paper aims to quantitively assess the resilience of residential properties to urban flooding in Port Harcourt, Nigeria, and assess whether they vary at spatially aggregated scales relative to the level of flood exposure.

The study synthesizes theoretical constructs/indicators for quantifying property level resilience, as a basis for measuring resilience. Using a two-stage purposive/stratified randomized sampling approach, 407 questionnaires were sent out to residents of 25 flood-prone areas, to solicit information on the resilience constructs as indicated by the adaptation behaviors of individual households and their property attributes. A principal component analysis approach is used as a mechanism for weighting the indicators, based on which aggregated spatial-scale resilience indices were computed for the 25 sampled areas relative to their levels of flood exposure.

Area 11 located in the moderate flood zone has the lowest resilience index, while Area 20 located in the high flood zone has the highest resilience index. The resilience indices for the low, moderate and high flood zone show only minimal and statistically insignificant differences indicating maladaptation even with incremental levels of flood exposure.

The approach to resilience measurement exemplifies a reproducible lens through which the concept of “living with floods” can be holistically assessed at the property level while highlighting the nexus of the social and technical dimensions.

The study moves beyond theoretical conceptualization, to empirically quantify the complex concept of property-level flood resilience.