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The geography of maritime ranges: interfacing global maritime shipping networks with Hinterlands

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Abstract

The paper looks at an intermediate scale of analysis for maritime transportation; the maritime range. Maritime ranges are bounded regions where a set of ports are either in competition, complementary, sharing a common regulatory regime, or having some fundamental geographical commonality. This scale is mostly missing from the research about the structure and organization of maritime transportation focusing on either the port or on the shipping network. The paper proposes a methodology defining maritime ranges bounded by maritime, inter-range, and hinterland boundaries. This methodology is applied to define 28 global maritime ranges representing functional commercial entities generating and attracting maritime traffic.

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Notes

  1. 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.

  2. The Gini coefficient (G) measures the degree of concentration (inequality) of a variable in a distribution of its elements. It ranges between 0, where there is no concentration (perfect equality), and 1 where there is the total concentration (perfect inequality).

  3. The Nearest Neighbor Index (NNI) is expressed as the ratio of the observed mean distance to the expected mean distance. The expected distance is the average distance between neighbors in a random distribution. If the index is less than 1, the pattern exhibits clustering. If the index is greater than 1, the trend is toward dispersion. The area used to calculate the NNI is derived from a 200 km band (100 km on the foreland and 100 km on the hinterland) that follows the coastline of each range.

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  1. Department of Global Studies and Geography, Hofstra University, New York, 11549, USA

    Jean-Paul Rodrigue

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  1. Jean-Paul Rodrigue
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Correspondence to Jean-Paul Rodrigue.

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Rodrigue, JP. The geography of maritime ranges: interfacing global maritime shipping networks with Hinterlands. GeoJournal 87, 1231–1244 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10708-020-10308-y

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