Evolutionary Mechanism of Port Clusters Based on the Theory of Dissipative Structure

This paper aims to investigate the internal developing mechanism of a port cluster system. It was proved that a regional port cluster is a typical dissipative structure system, which presents the characteristics of openness, non equilibrium, non linearity and stochastic fluctuation. Considering the port cluster system is a continuous time system, we established the basic evolutionary equations according to the evolutionary model of biological population. Then, suppose there are only two ports in this cluster in the initial stage, the evolutionary mechanism were discussed in three different situations. The results show that symbiosis of both ports only appears in one situation and at least one port dies out in the other two situations. Besides, symbiotic evolution can promote further exploitation of potential resources and improve the effectiveness of the whole system. In the end, some further researching directions were suggested.