CoRiMaS—An Ontological Approach to Cooperative Risk Management in Seaports

For today’s global value chains, seaports and their operations are indispensable components. In many cases, the cargo handling takes place in close proximity to residential and/or environmentally sensitive areas. Furthermore, seaports are often not operated by a single organization, but need to be considered as communities of sometimes hundreds of internal and external stakeholders. Due to their close cooperation in the cargo handling process, risk management should be a common approach among the internal stakeholders as well in order to effectively mitigate and respond to emerging risks. However, empirical research has revealed that risk management is often limited to the organization itself, which indicates a clear lack of cooperation. Primary reasons in this regard are missing knowledge about the relations and responsibilities within the port and differing terminologies. Therefore, we propose an ontology (CoRiMaS) that implements a developed reference model for risk management that explicitly aims at seaports with a cooperative approach to risk management. CoRiMaS has been designed looking at the Semantic Web and at the Linked Data model to provide a common interoperable vocabulary in the target domain. The key concepts of our ontology comprise the hazard, stakeholder, seaport, cooperation aspect, and risk management process. We validated our ontology by applying it in a case study format to the Port of Hamburg (Germany). The CoRiMaS ontology can be widely applied to foster cooperation within and among seaports. We believe that such an ontological approach has the potential to improve current risk management practices and, thereby, to increase the resilience of operations, as well as the protection of sensitive surrounding areas.</jats:p

An ontological approach to logistics

In today’s global market, the competitiveness of enterprises is strongly dictated by their ability to collaborate with other enterprises. Ontologies enable common understanding of concepts and have been acknowledged as a powerful means to foster collaboration, both within the boundaries of an individual enterprise (intra-enterprise) as outside these boundaries (inter-enterprise). This paper argues that the use of ontologies can be beneficial for enterprise interoperability in the logistics domain, to improve communication and foster knowledge reuse, to facilitate the integration of existing systems and to support the development process of software solutions. Our experience shows that the development of ontologies for logistics is not a trivial task, and guidelines and best practices are necessary in this domain, especially to bridge the gap between theory and practice. On the one hand, proper theoretical and methodological support for ontology engineering is necessary in order to deliver precise, consistent and well-founded solutions to the market. On the other hand, solutions to practical issues should be provided and not take too long to be produced in order not to be detached from the original real market needs. This paper proposes an ontological approach for logistics that balances the trade-off between precision and pragmatism, by combining top-down and bottom-up practices for ontology engineering. From a top-down perspective, we promote the reuse of existing general-purpose (upper) ontologies and specialize them for the purpose of logistics. From a bottom-up perspective, we reuse code lists and classifications that already exist in logistics to support the creation of instances of our upper level concepts. The paper also presents a representative fragment of our core ontology for logistics and identifies areas for further work in ontology engineering for logistics

Beyond geographic path dependencies: towards a post-structuralist approach of the port-city interface

Technological breakthroughs in the maritime transport industry gave rise to multimodality and global supply chains (Olivier & Slack, 2006). The high competitive character of this maritime transport industry induced transnational corporations (TNCs) to integrate their logistic processes horizontally and vertically. In order to keep attracting these TNCs, ports evolved downstream away from the city, followed by an economic, spatial and most recently by an institutional separation; resulting in less innovation due to the decreasing related variety between maritime and urban economics (Hall & Jacobs, 2012). Other emerging varying conditions are related to the sea level rise which reduces available space were port could further expand, leading to governance dilemmas between economy and ecology. Finally, as the burdens, such as congestion or a decreasing employment rate, are for the region, and the economic benefits are for a small group of TCNs, the ‘license to operate’ has become increasingly complex. The numerous different concepts and models trying to understand these changes are usually based on a historic-morphological approach that can be traced back to the so-called ‘anyport model’ and its modifications (Hoyle, 1989). The theoretical approach of these models is imbedded in structuralism and tries to generalize the observed evolution of the port city complex. An increasing number of researchers critiques the mainstream theories and their ambition for building universal understanding. Researchers emphasize the importance of the port city interface and its related variety. Therefore they point out the risk of facilitating the multidimensional separation by using a wrong assumption and a lack of understanding local processes with a global outlook. To tackle this risk, we have to move beyond this lock-in (Boelens & de Roo, 2014). There is a need to move towards a post-structural perspective of the port city interface, resulting in a more complex, actor-relational and co-evolving approach. This paper is the first step of a four year PhD-research on the theme of the port city interface. In the first part a literature framework is proposed of the previous research about the subject, questioning if existing studies have to be more attuned to regional and local characteristics. The second section focuses on the post-structuralist approach and explores its potential application for the study of the port city complexes. It will illustrate recent ideas of co-evolution and actor networks (Boelens & de Roo, 2014) applied on case studies in Belgium

On Repairing Reasoning Reversals via Representational Refinements

Representation is a fluent. A mismatch between the real world and an agent’s representation of it can be signalled by unexpected failures (or successes) of the agent’s reasoning. The ‘real world ’ may include the ontologies of other agents. Such mismatches can be repaired by refining or abstracting an agent’s ontology. These refinements or abstractions may not be limited to changes of belief, but may also change the signature of the agent’s ontology. We describe the implementation and successful evaluation of these ideas in the ORS system. ORS diagnoses failures in plan execution and then repairs the faulty ontologies. Our automated approach to dynamic ontology repair has been designed specifically to address real issues in multi-agent systems, for instance, as envisaged in the Semantic Web

Decision Support and Systems Interoperability in Global Business Management

Globalization of business and volatility of financial markets has catapulted ‘cycle-time’ as a key indicator of operational efficiency in business processes. Systems automation holds the promise to augment the ability of business and healthcare networks to rapidly adapt to changes or respond, with minimal human intervention, under ideal conditions. Currently, system of systems (SOS) or organization of networks contribute minimally in making decisions because collaboration remains elusive due the challenges of complexity. Convergence and maturity of research offers the potential for a paradigm shift in interoperability. This paper explores some of these trends and related technologies. Irrespective of the characteristics of information systems, the development of various industry-contributed ontologies for knowledge and decision layers, may spur self-organizing SOS to increase the ability to sense and respond. Profitability from pervasive use of ontological frameworks and agent-based modeling may depend on the ability to use them through better enterprise and extraprise exchange

A model for an inland port in Australia

This paper examines the role of an inland port particular to the outer regions of Melbourne, Australia. In this study, it has been experienced that the broad use of terminology, in the Melbourne context, has been a stumbling block. In its particular context, this has provided the impetus for the development of a model for an inland port that is unambiguous. It is clear from international examples that such a development acts as a significant potential nucleus for regional economic growth, but the lack of a facilitated discussion is an impediment. This model is offered as a facilitator and a useful tool in the construction of a common understanding

An Agent-based Approach for Improving the Performance of Distributed Business Processes in Maritime Port Community

In the recent years, the concept of “port community” has been adopted by the maritime transport industry in order to achieve a higher degree of coordination and cooperation amongst organizations involved in the transfer of goods through the port area. The business processes of the port community supply chain form a complicated process which involves several process steps, multiple actors, and numerous information exchanges. One of the widely used applications of ICT in ports is the Port Community System (PCS) which is implemented in ports in order to reduce paperwork and to facilitate the information flow related to port operations and cargo clearance. However, existing PCSs are limited in functionalities that facilitate the management and coordination of material, financial, and information flows within the port community supply chain. This research programme addresses the use of agent technology to introduce business process management functionalities, which are vital for port communities, aiming to the enhancement of the performance of the port community supply chain. The investigation begins with an examination of the current state in view of the business perspective and the technical perspective. The business perspective focuses on understanding the nature of the port community, its main characteristics, and its problems. Accordingly, a number of requirements are identified as essential amendments to information systems in seaports. On the other hand, the technical perspective focuses on technologies that are convenient for solving problems in business process management within port communities. The research focuses on three technologies; the workflow technology, agent technology, and service orientation. An analysis of information systems across port communities enables an examination of the current PCSs with regard to their coordination and workflow management capabilities. The most important finding of this analysis is that the performance of the business processes, and in particular the performance of the port community supply chain, is not in the scope of the examined PCSs. Accordingly, the Agent-Based Middleware for Port Community Management (ABMPCM) is proposed as an approach for providing essential functionalities that would facilitate collaborative planning and business process management. As a core component of the ABMPCM, the Collaborative Planning Facility (CPF) is described in further details. A CPF prototype has been developed as an agent-based system for the domain of inland transport of containers to demonstrate its practical effectiveness. To evaluate the practical application of the CPF, a simulation environment is introduced in order to facilitate the evaluation process. The research started with the definition of a multi-agent simulation framework for port community supply chain. Then, a prototype has been implemented and employed for the evaluation of the CPF. The results of the simulation experiments demonstrate that our agent-based approach effectively enhances the performance of business process in the port community