Port Sustainability Index: Methodological Issues

Authors: Chakrabartty SN*

DOI: 10.23880/jeesc-16000107

Volume 2, Issue 1

Abstract

Approaches to find impact of maritime transport on environmental performance of ports or port regions through models with different sets of assumptions suffer from limitations. The paper describes an integrated Port Sustainability Index (PSI) by combining relevant environmental aspects of port processes and operations by transforming each indicator to follow normal distribution and taking PSI as sum of such normally distributed indicator scores, avoiding skew and outliers. Thus, there is no bias for developed or under-developed ports. PSI is simple and satisfies desired properties including assessment of effectiveness of policy measures through responsiveness, statistical tests of equality of mean PSI across ports. Dimensions of PSI can be ranked by respective elasticity. The method also helps to find growth curve of PSI of a port over time. Proposed PSI may help port authorities to evaluate their performance from the sustainability angle along with performances in the relevant dimensions and may serve as a strategic tool for port environmental performance management.

Keywords: Port Sustainability Index; Composite Index; Normal Distribution; Convolution; Responsiveness; Test of Hypothesis

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