César DUCRUET, CNRS, France
One of the most salient features of the current European port system is its high degree of concentration. While the top twenty ports handle about three-quarters of total container port throughput, the largest gateways mainly locate along the so-called Le Havre – Hamburg range. The selective maritime network thus bypasses numerous other ports, which become peripheral both at sea and on land. This research proposes an analysis of the changing spatial distribution of maritime traffic over the period 1946-2008, based on untapped vessel movement data among European ports. It first illustrates the changing level of port concentration, using conventional statistical tools applied to the number of ship calls per port (Gini coefficient, Herfindhal index, rank-size distribution). Second, we examine the factors influencing the emergence of communities (or clusters) in the network of inter-port flows, both in terms of barrier effects (e.g. coastline design, political boundaries) and facilitations (e.g. hub dominance, regionalisation). Main results show that despite strong East-West and North-South differentiations, we observe an early and fastly expanding centralization of the network by the main northern hubs. This confirms the importance of early innovation diffusion (cf. containerisation) and regional integration processes in the evolution of Europe’s contemporary maritime network.
Mots clés : Europe|Maritime transport|Port system|Regional integration|Vessel movements
A102781CD