Methodology for Traffic Study at Port – A Case study

Tarun Kumar Jha
Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad
tkjha@iimahd.ernet.in

Keywords: Ports Methodology, Traffic Forecast, Case Study

Abstracts
In the literature researchers have mentioned various forecasting techniques, which tend to fall into three categories: time series and projections, model building and simulation, and qualitative forecasting (Frankel 1987). Trend extrapolation, pattern identification and probabilistic forecasting falling under model building are based on series of historical data that are analyzed in various statistical ways to arrive at forecasts of the future. We also like to mention a stream of researchers, who understand the perspective of the shipper and why they choose a particular port (Nir et. al 2003 for a review). The literature mentioned for port choice is mainly container port, contrary to our study, where we are studying dry bulk port terminal for forecast. Our methodology is different as we try to understand both the quantitative factors as well as the qualitative factors simultaneously to comprehensively forecast the traffic. We differ from the earlier researchers, who have undertaken only time series or simulation modeling to forecast the traffic. And also from the researchers who have taken only the choice behavior factors to understand which ports will be chosen. We try to understand the entire traffic prevailing at the port and how the developments in the future will affect the port traffic.

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