A multi criteria decision-making model for selecting hub port for Iranian marine industry

Nowadays, selecting the most appropriate location for hub is one of the most significant issues not only in road, rail and air transportations, but also in maritime. Transshipment is the fastest growing segment of the marine container market; it increases traffic flow of marine container and scope of this type of marine carriage, accordingly. In this way, determining a movement loop for the voyages of a shipping company, probes identification of container hub ports by considering different operational factors including distance to the destinations. The focus of this paper is to locate the best location for container transshipment hub in southern seas of Iran. In this paper, an MCDM model is proposed for evaluating and selecting the marine container transshipment hub port. Finally, the utilization of the proposed model is demonstrated with a real case study of Iranian main ports. The results show that the MCDM model can be used to explain the evaluation and decision-making procedures of a proper marine container hub location selection.