Evaluating recovery strategies for the disruptions in liner shipping networks: a resilience approach

• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJLM-05-2021-0263
• Published date: 15 October 2021
• Date: 15 October 2021
• Pages: 389-409
• Subject Matter: Management science & operations,Logistics
• Author: Chengpeng Wan,Jiale Tao,Zaili Yang,Di Zhang

Evaluating recovery strategies for

the disruptions in liner shipping

networks: a resilience approach

Chengpeng Wan and Jiale Tao

ITS Center, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China

Zaili Yang

Liverpool Logistics Offshore and Marine Research Institute (LOOM),

Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, UK, and

Di Zhang

ITS Center, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China and

School of Transportation and Logistics Engineering,

Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, China

Abstract

Purpose –Since the start of the current century, the world at largehas experienced uncertainties as a result of

climate change, terrorism threats and increasing economic upheaval. These uncertainties create non-classical

risks for global seaborne container trade and liner shipping networks (LSNs). The purpose of this paper is to

establish a novel risk-based resilience framework to measure the effectiveness of different recovery strategies

for the disruptions in LSNs in a quantitative manner.

Design/methodology/approach –Based on a resilience loss triangle model, an indicator of resilience–cost

ratio is designed to measure the performance of LSNs during recovery. Four recovery strategies are proposed

to test the rationality and feasibility of the developed indicator in aiding decision-making of LSNs from a

resilience perspective.

Findings–The analysisresults reveal that the superiorities of differentrecovery strategies vary depending on

both the structures of LSNs and the specific requirements during recovery. Moreover, optimizing the sequence

of ports being recovered will improve the overall recovery efficiency of the investigated LSN.

Research limitations/implications –As an exploratory research trying to enrich the risk-based resilience

evaluation of LSNs from a complex network perspective, only two attributes (e.g. port scare and economy) are

considered at the current stage when estimating the time needed to fully recover the whole LSN. In future

research, more attributes from the industry may be identified and incorporated into the proposed model to

further extend its ability and application scopes.

Practical implications –The findings will help to improve managerial understandings of recovery

strategies to build more resilient LSNs. The proposed model has the capability to be tailored to tackle different

types of risks in addition to the storm disaster condition.

Originality/value –The risk-based resilience framework and the resilience–cost ratio indicator are newly

developed in this research. They can consider LSNs’structural resilience and the total costs that a recovery

strategy needs to restore the whole system simultaneously.

Keywords Liner shipping network, Transport resilience, Maritime silk road (MSR), Maritime safety,

Maritime security

Paper type Research paper

Disruptions in

liner shipping

networks

389

This paper forms part of a special section “Resilient supply chains through innovative logistics

management”, guest edited by Peggy S. Chen and Jiangang Fei.

The authors would like to acknowledge the National Key R&D Program of China (2020YFE0201200),

National Natural Science Foundation of China (51909202) and the Fundamental Research Funds for the

Central Universities (WUT: 2020III042GX). This work is also partially supported by the European

Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme RISE under grant agreement no. 823759

(REMESH) and no. 777742 (GOLF). This work is financially supported by a European Research Council

project (TRUST CoG 2019 864742).

The current issue and full text archive of this journal is available on Emerald Insight at:

https://www.emerald.com/insight/0957-4093.htm

Received 10 May 2021

Revised 23 September 2021

Accepted 23 September 2021

The International Journal of

Logistics Management

Vol. 33 No. 2, 2022

pp. 389-409

© Emerald Publishing Limited

0957-4093

DOI 10.1108/IJLM-05-2021-0263

1. Introduction

In recent years, the world has seen the rapid development of international trade. The world’s

top 100 container ports contributed a total of 616 m TEU of global trade in 2018 (Seanews,

2020). Maritime shipping is the kernel of international multimodal transportation, and thus a

number of studies related to maritime shipping safety and security had been conducted to

ensure the daily steady operations of liner shipping networks (LSNs). However, recent

accidents occurred in LSNs demonstrate the insufficiency of purely relying on the existing

risk methods (i.e. probabilistic risk analysis (PRA)) to deal with (1) emerging non-classical

risks such as terrorist attacks and extreme weathers, (2) the shift of transport risk study focus

from component to system levels, and (3) safety practice change from pure risk prevention to

the combination of risk prevention (prior to the occurrence of an accident) and accident

recovery (after the occurrence). It triggers new research needs for effective solutions to the

disruptions in LSNs from a resilience perspective.

In an LSN system, ports and shipping routes are often exposed to various kinds of

disruptions caused by such risks as strike, tsunamis and explosions (Yang et al., 2018), which

could lead to the full/partial shutdown of ports and even the collapse of regional maritime

shipping networks. The direct consequences include the reduction of transport efficiency and

huge social and economic losses. More recently, the outbreak of the coronavirus (COVID) has

had a major impact on global shipping, affecting all shipping sectors from passenger to

container ships. Many countries have responded to the pandemic by imposing lockdowns or

restricting movement, and thus most of the ports worldwide have faced an unprecedented

number of vessels at anchor and vessels queue up waiting for new business opportunities. A

report by EMSA (2020) reveals that the number of ships calls at European Union (EU) ports

declined by 14.5% in the first 38 weeks of 2020 compared to the same period in the previous

year. Moreover, Clarkson Research’s most recent figure (2020) appears that worldwide

seaborne exchange will contract by 4.0% in 2020, comparative to the decrease in seaborne

exchange after the financial crisis in 2008/2009 (i.e. 4.1%).

Broadly speaking, there are two ways to reduce the impact of external disturbance on an

LSN system. One is prevention-oriented, meaning that defencive measures are taken to

reduce the probability and/or extent that an LSN system will be affected by disruptions, to

improve the system resistance and reduce the possible losses it may suffer. The other, being

response-driven, is to improve the recoverability of the system after the occurrence of

disruptions, so that it can return to the normal condition as soon as possible (Dai and Li, 2017).

Both resistance and recoverability of LSNs have a great impact on the efficient and reliable

operation of maritime transportation.

Previous studies have revealed that LSNs are vulnerable to deliberate attacks (e.g. Liu

et al., 2018a). Under such a situation, ports are usually disabled for a long time, and sometimes

this will lead to large-scale failures of shipping networks. However, the deliberate attacks due

to terrorist, regional conflicts and wars are relatively rare in reality. Compared to that,

accidents including piracy (Liu et al., 2021), port strikes and natural hazards are relatively

frequent. The application and development of a resilience concept provides a new perspective

for investigating the safety and security of LSNs from a systematic perspective. After being

disrupted, an LSN usually needs to go through two stages before it can be restored to its

original state, including the resilience loss and the resilience recovery. These two stages

reflect the ability of a shipping network to absorb and resist disturbance and to quickly

recover and adapt to new environment. A shipping network with higher resilience is believed

to be able to respond to emergencies more effectively and recover more quickly. Thus, it is of

great significance to measure and quantify the resilience of an LSN in order to ensure the

transport capacity and efficiency of the shipping networks. However, most of the previous

research mainly focused on vulnerability of LSNs, leaving the recovery of LSNs after

disruptions being ignored to some extent. In addition, compared to the qualitative analysis of

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