Resilience Evaluation of Ports along the Maritime Silk Road from the Perspective of Investment and Construction

Abstract

Since the establishment of the “Belt and Road” initiative, the investment and construction of ports along the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road have received extensive attention from the international community. The evaluation of ports is of great significance to investors’ investments and construction of ports around the world, so it is very necessary to establish a reasonable port evaluation system. At present, there are few studies on defining and evaluating port resilience, and the existing port evaluation index system has defects. Therefore, according to the similarity between cities and ports, this paper introduces the concept of “three-dimensional space” and the “system of systems” theory of cities and divides the resilience of ports along the Maritime Silk Road into three-dimensional spaces of “physical-society-information.” The CRITIC-entropy method and the TOPSIS method constructed a port resilience evaluation model along the Maritime Silk Road and quantitatively evaluated and analyzed the comprehensive resilience and subspatial resilience of 28 ports along the 21st Century Maritime Silk Road. The results show that the route network port degree, the annual throughput of the port container, and the number of fixed broadband subscribers per 100 people are the key indicators that affect the port’s physical space resilience, social space resilience, and information space resilience. Also, coordinated physical, social, and information spatial resilience development plays a catalytic role in improving overall resilience. Therefore, the investment of ports along the Maritime Silk Road should adopt corresponding and more targeted investment plans according to the actual resilience of each port. The research provides new ideas and directions for investors to invest in port construction and has certain practical guiding significance for the increase of investors’ income and the sound development of the national economy.