Title: Socio-economic valuation of traffic in inland ports: the development of a weighing rule for the port of Brussels

Authors: Mychal Langenus; Michaël Dooms; Elvira Haezendonck; Geoffrey Aerts

Addresses: Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Pleinlaan 2 – Room C.2.13, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium ' Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Pleinlaan 2 – Room C.2.13, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium ' Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Pleinlaan 2 – Room C.2.14, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium; Department of Management, Faculty of Applied Economics (TEW), Universiteit Antwerpen (UA), Belgium ' Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), Pleinlaan 2 – Room C.2.10, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium

Abstract: The objective of this paper is to develop a weighing rule for the socio-economic valuation of traffic categories in inland ports. Weighing rules are tools that provide insights based on the gross and relative added value per ton for different prevalent traffic categories. While port performance indicators rather focus on throughput in absolute tons, stakeholder requests on the impact of ports on society suggest that value added of each tonne handled should also be an important parameter. While most weighing rules developed and applied during the last decades have been focusing on seaports, limited research has been devoted to inland ports and their specific characteristics. Our results show the relatively higher and lower added values for the case of the Port of Brussels, and that the trade-off with seaports and development of co-located logistical activities can be of considerable influence on the added value of an inland port.

Keywords: strategic management; port management; development; value added; socio-economic; inland ports; socio-economic valuation; traffic categories; weighing rules; Brussels; seaports; co-located logistics; Belgium.

DOI: 10.1504/IJDSRM.2016.079796

International Journal of Decision Sciences, Risk and Management, 2016 Vol.6 No.3, pp.297 - 318

Received: 20 Jan 2016
Accepted: 12 Mar 2016
Published online: 14 Oct 2016 *

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