System Dynamics Analysis On Socio-Economic Impact Of Coal Port Construction Projects

As China's rapid economic development, electric power demand and "Three West" coal shipments continue to grow rapidly. The pressure of long-term coal transportation has become a determinant factor of economic growth. In recent years, South China suffering from power generation coal supply shortage frequently, especially during the victim of storm in 2008 spring festival, once again shows that the "bottleneck" of coal transportation is still one of the main issues that affect national energy security. Under this circumstance, the coal ports one after another through the construction of new terminals, sea-route repair, and other large projects enhance their energy transport capacity. With a scientific, rational, comprehensive evaluation method to analyze the socio-economic impact of these projects, so as to fully describe the contribution made by the coal port to national and regional economic development, then to provide scientific basis of making strategy for coordinated development of the port and other national economic sectors, is of strategic importance.In this paper, the core issue is the socio-economic impact of coal port construction projects. A modal is established on the basis of System Dynamics principle, and then a quantitative analysis method is applied to analyze the socio-economic impact in three main regions. The result shows that the method used in this paper is more comprehensive and scientific than conventional method.To start with the status quo of coal reserves, production, transportation and consume in China, coal transportation is pointed to be still present and a period in the future "bottleneck" of socio-economic development. According to current research on the port and coal issues on the basis of system dynamics, the defect of current quantitative analysis method is pointed out. From the characteristics of coal port, the impact regions are divided into three subsystems, the coal producing subsystem, coal transportation subsystem, coal consumption subsystem. Respectively, system dynamics three regional economic subsystem models are established. Applying the models to simulate a port sea-route repair project's impact on various subsystems, the quantitative relations between port throughput and economic impact on regional subsystems are put forward. The simulation results basically agree with the reality.