Resilience assessment of global container shipping network via port communities

The global container shipping network (GCSN) is vulnerable to disruptions. This study aims to enhance the GCSN resilience by proposing an enhanced disruption simulation model and introducing a novel research perspective: port communities. The simulation model integrates cascading failure and recovery mechanisms, incorporates ship behaviour during disruptions, and introduces a temporal dimension to track the network's evolution. Port community-to- community connections provide a clearer and more holistic perspective. Using Infomap algorithm, port communities are identified based on transportation direction, capacity, and geographic proximity, resulting in a decentralized and balanced structure while preserving GCSN's scale-free and small-world properties. Simulations of various disruption scenarios and recovery strategies yielded optimized key parameters and practical recommendations. For instance, the optimal distance threshold for detecting port communities is 300 km. Additionally, weak correlations between alternative port numbers and community size/throughput (0.17, 0.246) underscore the need for geographically balanced distribution and reduced reliance on single ports.