Port vulnerability assessment from the perspective of critical infrastructure interdependency

The increasing damages and losses bring requests to improve coping capacities for extreme conditions on the identification of and improvement to socioeconomic vulnerabilities. Disruptions to critical infrastructure (CI) influence the capacities for resilience and sustainable daily operations both directly and by causing failures in one system that in turn affects other systems. Among the transportation systems widely identified as national CI that should be protected, ports provide substantial employment, industrial activity, along with national and regional development. This study thus examines the vulnerability of port failures from an interdependency perspective. Fourteen vulnerable factors are developed by literatures as well as in-depth interviews. Four international commercial ports in Taiwan are employed as empirical cases to evaluate port vulnerability through semi-quantitatively systematic methods, including fuzzy cognitive maps and sensitivity model, while geographic information systems are used to clarify the spatial-functional interdependency. In addition to the underestimated vulnerability because of omitted interdependency, analytical results reveal that capacity and efficiency significantly affect port vulnerability. Increasing local cargo bases and co-opetition are suggested to improve the port vulnerability. The proposed assessment framework helps decision-makers understand the interdependent vulnerabilities and adopt appropriate strategies for the mitigation of losses.