Logistics Park Location Selection Under "One Belt One Road" Initiative:An Explanatary Study

Since proposed by Chinese government,the "One Belt and One Road"(OBOR)initiative has been widely accepted by the world and become one of Chinese vital medium and long term development plans.OBOR will not only facilitate the relative advantage of China's globalization strategy,diversification of China's strategic material transportation channels,mutual beneficial cooperation and collaboration between China and other countries,and finally safety and China's economic safety and security,but also provide enormous development opportunities to more than 60 countries and regions along "One Belt" and "One Road".Promoting mutual trade among the different countries and regions is one of the key approaches to and an essential part of the successful implementation of the "One Belt and One Road" initiative.Correspondingly logistics infrastructure,including transportation channels like high ways and rail ways,transshipping facilities,shipping organizations,etc.,should be well constructed to suport the development of mutual trade.A logistics park integrating multiple functions like cargo receiving and distributing,information exchange,and value-added processing plays a tremendously important role in the whole logistics chain,consequently is deem as one of the indispensable logistics facilities.The location selection of a logistics park,which imposes heavy effects on the profit,has absorbed long-lasting attention from the academia and logistics industry and been regarded as a key research issue.Although substantial studies have been conducted in hope of finding the solution to the above problem,these solutions will not generate satisfactory results under the "One Belt One Road" condition owing to 4 weaknesses:(1)most of current studies based on deterministic and uncertain location models cannot deal with the uncertainties resulted from "OBOR";(2)these studies confuse logistics volume with logistics demand.The former reflects the logistics park short-term capacity,while the latter the medium-long-term development trend;(3)current studies based on optimization algorithms rely on some specific historical data,however,lack in data has been a frequently-occurring problem in practice;(4)current location selection models were proposed before"OBOR",therefore these models cannot fit new characteristics brought by "OBOR".However,we are factually facing the uncertainties resulted from "One Belt One Road",therefore the traditional models are not competent for logistics park location selection under "OBOR".To overcome the above challenges,this paper first analyzes the essential effects of"OBOR" on logistics park location decision,then deeply investigates the issue of logistics park location selection under "OBOR".Contributions of this paper can be explained from the following perspectives:(1)This paper explored the mechanism of "OBOR" influencing on China's logistics park planning,and the findings would provide the theoretical ground for further research(2)This paper proposed a model estimating logistics growth potential based on the partial adjustment theory.This model avoids mistaking logistics volume as logistics demand and is able to provide more reliable logistics demand data for decision making.This model is an innovative method of logistics demand analysis.(3)This paper formulated a macro logistics park location model entitled EFER via a hybrid of expert system,fuzzy set,and evidential reasoning(ER)theories.The proposed model can overcome the shortage of empirical data and reduce the subjective biases of traditional judgment-based location methods.This work is an innovative application of ER theory to logistics park location selection,not only expand the application domain of ER but also enrich the tools and theory of logistics park location.(4)This paper proposed a micro logistics park location model based the interval programming theory.This model covers uncertainty resulted from "One Belt One Road,and generates an optimal interval solution,where all points inside are acceptable locations.This model is immune from the risk of the deterministic models whose single optimal solution cannot be applied for some practical reasons,and correspondingly provide more reliable candidate locations for decision makers.This work is a cross application of the interval programming theory and logistics facility location theory,and provides an innovative programming-based location method.