Public seaport operations: a dynamic cost-benefit model

Abstract

Seaports in the United States have been evaluated by two chief means. For intraport performance, measures of financial accounting and/or tonnage trends have been widely used. Variants of export-base analysis have been employed to render some sort of descriptive impact statement regarding port operations.

The present work represents a departure from these information tools in the form of a model developed to evaluate and plan port performance. A form of cost-benefit analysis is employed to determine the direct outcomes registered by port operations. This format is extended in the form of an optimization problem using dynamic programming.

The work uses a case-study approach where the outcomes of port operations are merged to concerns of public policy. The focus is on developing a planning model to aid the policy maker in determining the outcomes produced by port operations and developing strategies to improve upon these outcomes.