Series/Report no.:
44th Congress of the European Regional Science Association: "Regions and Fiscal Federalism", 25th - 29th August 2004, Porto, Portugal
Abstract:
Haezendonck (2001) introduced an ecological dimension in conventional port portfolio analysis for seaports and applied it to the seaports in the Hamburg – Le Havre range. Given the fast growth of inland waterway transport, and the development of inland ports in the hinterland of seaports, the analysis can also be extended to evaluate the ‘green’ competitiveness of inland ports, as they are considered as important enablers to reach objectives of sustainable development. In this paper, the ‘green port portfolio analysis’ is applied to a range of eight inland ports in Western Europe. This results in (1) a number of specific methodological issues related to the inland port environment, (2) an interesting research agenda both for policy-makers at the local and regional level as well as for inland port managers. Keywords: Strategic management, port management & development