Economic Evaluation of the Spanish port System Using the Promethee Multicriteria decision Method

Abstract

Due to legislation changes during the Nineties, the Spanish Port System has gone through a series of changes that, simultaneous with a period of economic expansion and generalized marine traffic growth, have affected the Port System's composition and organization. The gradual transformations produced, give shape to a new model of operation for Port Authorities, which now start to be managed under business criteria and procedures of functional autonomy and competition.Our work considers these circumstances from the approach offered by multiple objective decision models, using certain ratios with economic meaning which will allow determining how their relative ranking within the national set has varied. The great variety of available business ratios gives the problem a discrete multicriteria dimension. Thus we have chosen the Promethee method for our analysis, given its results simplicity and easy understanding for the decision agent, the economic interpretation of its parameters, and the stability of its results.Spanish Port System, Multicriteria Analysis, Promethee Method.