Assessing Strategies for Mitigating Maritime Chokepoint Disruptions
Assessing Strategies for Mitigating Maritime Chokepoint Disruptions
Transportation Research Part A Assessing Strategies for Mitigating Maritime Chokepoint Disruptions -- Manuscript Draft --
Cover Letter
Cover Letter
Dear editors,
I would like to submit the manuscript for consideration in the Journal of Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice for the special issue "Transportation resilience and its role in regional economic development". My article is entitled:
"Assessing Strategies for Mitigating Maritime Chokepoint Disruptions".
A study addresses a key gap in disruption management, specifically the need to evaluate blockage mitigation strategies, such as rerouting and waiting strategies, for primary chokepoints in the maritime business, within the context of considering the full cost of shipping, and the factors that impact the choice of those strategies.
A central novelty of the work is the use of Discrete Event Simulation to model and assess mitigation strategies, and the A-star algorithm for finding optimal rerouting pathways. The considered case in this research is the container flow between Europe and Asia via the Suez Canal, with various durations of blockage. The aforementioned approaches enable the assessment of various costs from different perspectives (e.g., time, operational, carbon dioxide emission, and societal costs) of complex operational variables, e.g., the variety of possible transit demand via the Suez Canal (the unpredictability of accumulating queues for passage), the demand for cargo transportation between Europe and Asia, and the vessels affected by blockages. Furthermore, sensitivity analysis, combined with Random Forest, highlights the most critical factors that stakeholders should consider when making a decision.
Findings reveal the dominance of rerouting strategies in terms of speed for all considered blockage duration scenarios from a time cost perspective. However, from three other perspectives (operational, emission, and societal costs), the increased speed results in additional costs that outweigh the benefits of rerouting from a time perspective. For long considered blockages, rerouting can be a solution, but only with the normal (not increased) speed.
Moreover, sensitivity analyses reveal the impact of freight rates for all considered mitigation pathways. In contrast, inventory cost is the second most crucial factor for strategies involving waiting at the end of the blockage and rerouting at normal speed. The Energy Efficiency Design Index sufficiently impacts the recruiting strategies along with the fuel cost.
This manuscript is original, has not been published, and is not currently under consideration elsewhere. The first version of this research was presented at two conferences. First, at the "The Transportation Research Symposium" in Rotterdam, May twenty-five to twenty-eight, twenty twenty-five. Second, at the "IAME" in Bergen, June twenty-five to twenty-seven, twenty twenty-five.
I believe my manuscript aligns with the journal's aim, given its emphasis on the maritime, environmental, cost, and time implications of blockage mitigation strategy selection, factors affecting this choice, methodological innovation, and policy-relevant insights into sustainable shipping. Based on my interpretation of the special issue, the themes raised in the manuscript consider transportation resilience, economic impacts of transportation resilience (understanding transportation resilience and economic impacts of transportation resilience, respectively), and partially in emerging challenges (emerging challenges in transportation resilience), since the model can be implemented in such cases.
In my opinion, this research contributes to the literature on disruption management by considering rerouting strategies (recovery pathways) and the factors influencing them, as well as resilience at the regional level by evaluating the different types of costs, time, and environmental footprint associated with decisions.
Thank you for considering my submission. I look forward to your response.
Best wishes, Mikhail Strukov.