The Research On Port Hinterland Segmentation

Port as a hub of foreign trade activities, the connection of external world, plays an important role in the national economy. Construction and development of the port not only have an important impact on coastal open cities, but also effect the implementation of the national strategy. Sometimes the the development of the port is related to the rise and fall of national economy. The development of a port depends not only on the construction of the port itself, it is the size of its hinterland, the economic situation of the hinterland is closely linked. If the port has a vast and well-developed hinterland, cargo of which transported through the port of transit, it will generate a lot of corresponding transport demand, which can promote the increased throughput of the port, and expand the port size and improve service levels. Thus, hinterland is very important to a port, it is necessary to define the port hinterland. A clear and precise division of the port hinterland is helpful for a port having the accurate positioning and scientific planning, which enable the port to get healthy and sustainable development.Against this background, methods of the segmentation of port hinterland were studied. This paper use Dalian Port as an object instance, analyzing the range of Dalian Port hinterland. Specific steps are as follows:Firstly, it has a brief introduction of the basic concepts of the port and the hinterland and analyses the relationship between the port and its hinterland. Then, it divides the hinterland into several categories according to different criteria. Since the purpose of this paper is to defined the port’s hinterland, it launch a study on the relationship between the port and its hinterland and the main factors affecting the division. Besides, it gives a brief introduction on the port layout of our country. Secondly, it summarizes the existing port hinterland segmentation methods and analyzes their characteristics and limitations. Based on the analysis of the existing methods, it establishes a new model for port hinterland segmentation, which combines the Voronoi diagram theory with the traditional theory of the breaking point. Thirdly, it use this method to segment the hinterland of Dalian port. Then according to the result of the segmentation of the hinterland of Dalian port, it gives some suggestions for Dalian Port to expand its hinterlands. Finally, the contents of this paper are analyzed and summarized. And it also points out the limitation of this research and makes some expectation of the future study.