Assessing the impact of the Covid-19 epidemic on the resilience of Chinese coastal ports

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic severely disrupted global maritime transport, while Chinese coastal ports demonstrated remarkable resilience, continuing to play a pivotal role in the shipping industry. This study categorizes resilience into five key properties (redundancy, flexibility, stability, recoverability, and scalability) using tier-1 and tier-2 indicators to evaluate the resilience performance of 16 ports from 2013 to 2022. To standardize the data, we apply the min-max normalization, followed by entropy weighting to evaluate the performance of various resilience indicators, then construct a DBN model to reflect the state transitions of resilience indicators. The findings reveal strong financial health is crucial for maintaining port resilience. Enhancing financial management and improving profitability provide a robust economic foundation for the sustainable development of ports. Additionally, cargo throughput and import-export trade are highly sensitive to port resilience.