A Coordination Model for Seaports and Its Application in the Beibu Bay Area

This paper studies the port development from the perspective of coordination which is different from previous work. For the first time the concept of coordination was introduced to evaluating the seaport development path. We applied an improved coordination degree model to such work which contains two categories of coordination: the coordination between a port and its local economy, and that between neighboring ports. Results from a case study in the Beibu Bay Area were analyzed, including explanations for influences of various sequential parameters. Sensitivity analysis shows the model is more robust to upper limits variations than to lower ones. The calculation results for ideal situations in future years prove the effectiveness of the model and imply some of their additional uses. Improvements of the model are suggested in terms of the selection of sequential parameters and the consideration of dynamic evolution of neighboring ports.