Effects of new shipping routes on the operational resilience of container lines: potential impacts of the Arctic Sea Route and the Kra Canal on the Europe-Far East seaborne trades

摘要

New shipping routes have been proposed to be more efficient than conventional routes, resulting in huge commercial opportunities, while reducing shipping costs and formidable technological challenges. However, few earlier studies have examined the resilience of container lines to evolving shipping networks and new routes. This study thus discusses the important factors affecting operational resilience of container lines and assesses their performance through a fuzzy cognitive map: a semi-quantitative simulation framework which considers interdependences among factors. The Europe-Far East (E/F) routes are employed as empirical cases, and then the resilience of container lines using the Arctic shipping route, the Thai Kra Canal and the traditional Suez route are simulated and compared. Results indicate that E/F route carriers can improve their operational resilience through a possible future Kra Canal in Thailand, but this would not be the case with Arctic shipping because of the worsening of navigational incidents and other operational deficiencies.