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This article analyses the role of cluster facilitators in the Singapore maritime cluster. Singapore has been recognised for its pro-business policies and its ability to attract international shipping companies to set up the ship ownership headquarters and ship management activities in Singapore.

The research is an empirical investigation on the approach for industrial cluster development of the Singapore maritime cluster, using the case study research methodology. The case study approach leverages on multiple sources of evidence from deep interviews (of 24 Singaporean firms and 13 Norwegian firms) related observations, documentation and archival records. As a means of contributing to the cluster renewal process, Singapore as the country embarks on the next stage of maritime cluster development, a benchmarking against the Norwegian Innovation Cluster has been incorporated.

The research findings reveals that Singapore is lacking in innovation activities that entails multi-firms collaborations and collaboration between multi-firms and research institutions. The existence of cluster organisation to facilitate collaborations between firms in the cluster and between firms in the cluster with research institutions is another contributing factor that are not institutionalised in the Singapore maritime cluster.

Though the research is grounded primarily on the international business theory, particularly from firm- and country-specific advantages of location decisions, the economic geography theory and cluster theory also complement the theoretical grounding.

The findings derived from this research aim to facilitate policy makers, maritime leaders and practitioners to develop effective courses of action in current and future maritime industry development.

The research provides value to maritime industry stakeholders, maritime leaders and policy makers in their firm positioning strategy. Thus, the research adds values to the maritime industry with similar country perspectives and firm values for developing policies.

To determine the influence of the development of clustering of the national business environment on the level of digital competitiveness.

The research was performed using the following methods: statistical analysis, correlation analysis and comparative analysis.

We study the influence of the development of clustering of the national business environment on the level of digital competitiveness. It is revealed that the studied developed countries (Singapore, Denmark and Switzerland) demonstrate a high level of clustering of business, which is assessed through the use of the indicator ‘State of сluster development’, and a high level of digital competitiveness. The considered developing countries (Peru, Mexico and the Philippines) have medium values of the above variables. Only Peru was able to use a highly effective mechanism of clustering, which influenced the digitalisation of sectors of the economy, which have business clusters. We also describe the competitive advantages of the development of cluster entrepreneurial structures, which ensure their economic and market success.

The scientific novelty of the results obtained is due to the elaboration on the specifics of the influence of the cluster strategy of business integration on the level of national digital competitiveness.

In Industry 4.0 era, many existing port logistics systems are inconsistent, old and ineffective and it restricts the effective operations of port logistics. The study aims to understand the issues faced by the players/actors of port logistics in the Industry 4.0 era for emerging economies and to develop a conceptual framework for managing the port logistics issues associated with it and by providing their possible solutions.

The study is divided into two parts, first part deals with identifying the major port logistics issues in Industry 4.0 era for emerging economies. It is achieved by conducting a semi-structured interview during the field visit to one of the major container handling ports in India. Second, the study adopts Soft System Methodology (SSM) to understand the issues and challenges faced by various actors of port logistics in the Industry 4.0 era and uses CATWOE analysis to identify the root causes.

Issues related to loading/unloading, transit, storage (warehouse), customs clearance, regulatory authorities, port management unit and inland transport connection providers are considered in the study and using SSM a final implementable model has been developed. This study focuses on analyzing and understanding the complete communication and organization structure of the port logistics system. The study identifies the major issues, various inefficiencies and root causes faced by various actors of port logistics during information sharing, cargo movement, the arrangement of the cargo shipments, etc. Further, the study develops a final implementable model by combining the delivery system, criteria system and Industry 4.0-enabled system.

The study enables concerned authorities like state government, central government and policymakers to have a profound understanding of the issues faced by the actors of the port logistics system. The study brings out valuable insights that help managers and stakeholders to make informed decisions for managing the port logistics issues and develop necessary policies aimed to deliver the cargoes in right place at right time. The current study also has some limitations because of sensitivity associated with concerned areas, due to its confidentiality, lack of availability of complete data and the nonsharing attitude of respondents. Further, the study was conducted only for private container shipping terminals and public container terminals were not included.

This research analyzes the port logistics sector as a whole system through SSM to identify issues and challenges faced by various actors of port logistics for emerging economies in the Industry 4.0 era. The study develops a comprehensive and integrated framework for reducing the unpredictability of costs and time for key processes. Further, the framework creates a transparent platform and helps in bringing standardization to ports.

The proposed Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) will become a large trade agreement in Asia, which has brought together the ten members of Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and five of the neighbors’ countries. Under the trend of globalization, the progress of the transportation industry and regional integration will increase the volume of trade, therefore maritime performance is intrinsically linked to trade. In fact, few studies have examined regional integration in the context of seaborne. This paper aims to use the cluster analysis and Poisson quasi-maximum likelihood (PQML) gravity model to investigate the trading bloc phenomenon and relation between trade and marine transportation.

In this paper, hierarchical clustering analysis and tree diagrams are used to identify functional areas characterized by bilateral trade intensity and bilateral liner shipping connectivity indices. Regional reorganizations that have occurred within Asian countries were studied. This study illustrates that these trading blocs have a positive impact on trade when maritime transport, production and trading networks have developed between regions. A gravity model was constructed using worldwide trade data for 2007, 2010 and 2015. The study considered free trade agreement (FTA)/common market (CM) of EU, RCEP and North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) as regional dummies and designed a real trade bloc induction variable. In addition, the study did not use the commonly adopted ordinary least squares (OLS) estimation but used the PQML method to estimate the gravity equation to overcome the problem of a large number of zero trade observations. Preliminary results show that regional integration cannot guarantee the establishment of intraregional trade but depends on the stage of economic development and regional industrial characteristics.

The major findings are summarized as follows. Both liner shipping connectivity and logistics performance have significant advantages with positive coefficients in each regression results. The creation of intraregional trade is not guaranteed, depending on the characteristics of the trade and the stage of economic development of the region. For RCEP, the effect created by intra-regional trade is better than the EU. Instead, the “nominal” intra-RCEP trade was significantly below the “real” trading blocs. For RCEP, the effect created by intra-regional trade is better than that of the EU. Instead, “nominal” intra-RCEP trade is much lower than “real” trading blocs. The real trading bloc between East Asia and Taiwan clearly exists, and the bloc phenomenon is becoming more and more significant. This result shows that Taiwan’s trade flow with East Asia is higher than the normal level relationship implied by its corresponding economic and geographical conditions.

This paper focuses on new empirical work done for this study is on the potential impact on trade. Earlier studies that have discussed and/or provided estimates of the benefits to the RCEP plan from improved transport and supply chain connectivity are cited. Marine transportation performance inherently links to economies of commerce. Few studies have examined regional integration in the context of maritime transportation, which reflects the lack of a mix of trade economists and maritime logistics research in the existing literature. This paper attempts to investigate the trading bloc phenomenon formed by regional integration (such as RCEP) and the relation between trade and marine transportation. With the official entry into force of the RCEP in 2020, it will promote increased trade and demand for logistics and maritime transport services in East Asia.

This study investigated the impact of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic on the Asian-Australasian cruise shipping network. The analysis was carried out using complex network analysis and data collected for two periods, before and after the pandemic outbreak. The analysis revealed that the network structure and properties have changed after the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Interestingly, the network’s density and the number of links have increased, but its scale-free property remains with the degree distribution follows the power law. The network has a higher connectivity efficiency with a smaller average path length and a higher clustering coefficient. Its hub ports still maintain an extensive connection. The network’s flow efficiency becomes higher and connectivity stronger after the pandemic. The role of cruise ports has changed as indicated by the degree, betweenness, closeness and eigenvector centralities. The study’s findings indicate that the cruise shipping sector could further enhance efficiency and identify strategies to assist the management in similar circumstances.

This study aims to identify the characteristics of the maritime shipping network in Northeast Asia as well as compare the level of port connectivity among these container ports in the region. In addition, this study analyses the change in role and position of 20 ports in the region by clustering these ports based on connectivity index and container throughput and route index.

This study employs Social Network Analysis (SNA) to delineate the international connectivity of major container ports in Northeast Asia. Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) is used to identify each port's connectivity index and container throughput index, and the resulting indexes are employed as the basis to cluster 20 major ports by fuzzy C-mean (FCM).

The results revealed that Northeast Asia is a highly connected maritime shipping network with the domination of Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong and Busan. Furthermore, both container throughput and connectivity in almost all container ports in the region have decreased significantly due to the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. The rapid growth of Shenzhen and Ningbo has allowed them to join Cluster 1 with Shanghai while maintaining high connectivity, yet decreasing container throughput has pushed Busan down to Cluster 2.

The originality of this study is to combine indexes of SNA into connectivity index reflecting characteristics of the maritime shipping network in Northeast Asia and categorize 20 major ports by FCM.

Turkey is a maritime country with its current merchant fleet and shipyards, geographical location, young population and growth potential. Clustering, being one of the important improvement methods of global competition power, is widely used in the maritime sector. Analysing the clustering level and potential of Istanbul, which is the major city of Turkey, in regard to economic and social aspects is a basic step for increasing global competitiveness in this sector. This study aims to measure the clustering level of Istanbul’s maritime sector and also define the effect of clustering level on firm performance.

The clustering levels of Istanbul’s maritime transportation and supporting firms, shipyards and maritime equipment manufacturers are measured by means of a survey based on Porter’s diamond theory in this paper. The relationship between clustering level and firm performance is defined by using simple linear regression and fuzzy linear regression methods. The weights of the criteria are calculated by means of entropy method.

It is concluded that despite its deficits, Istanbul’s maritime sector has significant potential to become a major maritime cluster not only in its region but also worldwide. The effect of clustering level on firm performance was observed to be statistically significant, but not high. The results of the simple linear regression and fuzzy linear regression methods are compared.

According to the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first study using fuzzy linear regression and entropy methods to analyse maritime clusters. It evaluates the effect of clustering level on firm performance in the case of Istanbul maritime sector.

Considering the varied and dynamic workload of vessel traffic service (VTS) operators, design an adaptive rotating shift solution to prevent them from getting tired while ensuring continuous high-quality services and finally guarantee a benign maritime traffic environment.

The problem of rotating shift in VTS and its influencing factors are analyzed first, then the framework of automatic identification system (AIS) data analytics is proposed, as well as the data model to extract spatial–temporal information. Besides, K-means-based anomaly detection method is adjusted to generate anomaly-free data, with which the traffic trend analysis and prediction are made. Based on this knowledge, strategies and methods for adaptive rotating shift design are worked out.

In VTS, vessel number and speed are identified as two most crucial factors influencing operators' workload. Based on the two factors, the proposed data model is verified to be effective on reducing data size and improving data processing efficiency. Besides, the K-means-based anomaly detection method could provide stable results, and the work shift pattern planning algorithm could efficiently generate acceptable solutions based on maritime traffic information.

This is a pioneer work on utilizing maritime traffic data to facilitate the operation management in VTS, which provides a new direction to improve their daily management. Besides, a systematic data-driven solution for adaptive rotating shift is proposed, including knowledge discovery method and decision-making algorithm for adaptive rotating shift design. The technical framework is flexible and can be extended for managing other activities in VTS or adapted in diverse fields.

The purpose of this study is to identify the critical success factors to international ship finance centre (ISFC) and to understand the reasons behind ship financing decision by shipowners and their views on the potential of Shanghai to become an ISFC in the near future.

Survey questionnaire and follow-up interviews were conducted. The survey of this study was conducted by firstly sending online questionnaire with interview questions via email and then carrying out interview either on telephone or in-person with the interview questions to collect factual data and views from individual interviewees.

This study identified governmental support and stable policy, sound and favourable legal system, advanced maritime cluster and dynamic source of finance as critical success factors which can help Shanghai to evolve into an international maritime centre with dual function as an ISFC which is a synthesis with the maritime sector of an international finance centre.

This paper is known to be the first to link international maritime centre with ISFC.

This paper aims to assess the dissemination of cluster ideas advanced in the “Competitive Advantage of Nations” and three subsequent national studies and the reasons for their substantial public policy impact in Norway.

The paper presents the theoretical and methodological novelties of each of the national studies, the inclusive study-organizing principle used and public policy impact.

The papers finds that the dissemination of cluster thinking and the development of a successful cluster-based industrial policy in Norway is largely a function of the nature and extent of the cluster research efforts that took place in Norway. The national cluster research projects mobilized all the key industrial and governmental actors in a very effective way, making studies with both rigor and relevance. Due to advanced and demanding policy makers, the studies also evolved in terms of the theoretical models and methodologies used.

The paper contributes by illuminating the direct and indirect impact of the “Competitive Advantage of Nations” on both academic endeavors and public policies in Norway and by explicating how studies that make it possible for academics and practitioners to work in tandem substantially affect public policy.