The Criticality of the European Multimodal Transportation Network

Abstract

A nation’s main port is a crucial component that contributes to the economic development of a country. Therefore, the role of the port becomes more critical nowadays. However, due to the existing hub-and-spoke structure of the European multimodal transportation network, polarisation and regionalisation are visible in the network. The increasing regionalisation and polarisation that happens in the European region widen the inequality in the network. Moreover, the inequality in the network will impact the sensitivity and resistance of the whole network to targeted disruptions, such as infrastructure failures, natural disasters, or potential terrorist attack. Then, on the real aspect, the widening of inequality in the network also inhibits the well-distributed economic development in the region. In this study, various methods will be employed to have multiple points of view of the network itself, such as the multilayer network analysis, community detection, and Network-based Hub Port Assessment (NHPA). Furthermore, the study will be structured into three building blocks that shapes as a foundation to perform the final analysis and provide a multifaceted overview of the overall network, which is versatility analysis, community structure analysis, and quantification of collaboration-connectivity of the container hubs. Afterwards, three determinants as measurements of network performance are defined, to perform the criticality analysis. This study concludes that the development of connections between different communities can help to decrease the existing inequality in the network. Then, the appearance of new community structure in the network can help to decrease the inequality in the network, which lead to more well-distributed economic development in the region.