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Information Fusion and Intelligent Geographic Information Systems (IF&IGIS'17) pp 167–186Cite as

Community Structures in Networks of Disaggregated Cargo Flows to Maritime Ports

Part of the Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography book series (LNGC)

Abstract

We investigate community structures in disaggregated cargo flows that are part of the global maritime trade. Individual origin–destination flows of containerized cargo on the hinterland-side of the global maritime trade collectively form a complex and large-scale network. We use community-detection algorithms to identify natural communities that exist in such highly asymmetric networks. The analysis compares the structures that are identified in two geographic regions: China and Europe. We trace shipments by their trajectory patterns considering domestic movement, cross-country movement, and trans-shipments. Then we use the Infomap and Walktrap algorithms to detect structural equivalence between shipments from hinterland cities to port cities. Data consist of individual flows of containerized trade bound for the United States in October 2006. We draw conclusions on the relative performance of the two algorithms on asymmetric data networks, on the effects of the geographic context and type of flows on their performance, and on the spatial integrity of community structures and the impact of market contestability on the semantics of detected communities.

Keywords

  • Global trade
  • Maritime network
  • Community detection
  • Port hinterlands
  • Logistics

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, University of North Carolina at Charlotte, 9201 University City Boulevard, Charlotte, NC, USA

    Paul H. Jung, Mona Kashiha & Jean-Claude Thill

Authors
  1. Paul H. Jung
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  2. Mona Kashiha
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  3. Jean-Claude Thill
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Jean-Claude Thill .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. SPIIRAS Hi Tech Research and Development Office Ltd., St. Petersburg, c.St-Peterburg, Russia

    Prof. Vasily Popovich

  2. Department for Urbanism, Transport, Environment & Information Society, Central European Institute of Technology - CEIT ALANOVA gemeinnützige GmbH , Schwechat, Austria

    Prof. Dr. Manfred Schrenk

  3. Department of Geography and Earth Sciences, The University of North Carolina, Charlotte, North Carolina, USA

    Dr. Jean-Claude Thill

  4. Naval Academy Research Institute , Brest Naval, Finistère, France

    Prof. Christophe Claramunt

  5. Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, Shanghai, China

    Prof. Tianzhen Wang

Appendix: Port-Shipment Volume in Communities

Appendix: Port-Shipment Volume in Communities

Tables 2, 3, 4, and 5.

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Jung, P.H., Kashiha, M., Thill, JC. (2018). Community Structures in Networks of Disaggregated Cargo Flows to Maritime Ports. In: Popovich, V., Schrenk, M., Thill, JC., Claramunt, C., Wang, T. (eds) Information Fusion and Intelligent Geographic Information Systems (IF&IGIS'17). Lecture Notes in Geoinformation and Cartography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59539-9_13

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