Lay Out And Planning To The Ports For The Shanghai International Maritime Center

It is one of the strategic plans made by the central government to establish the Shanghai International Maritime Center. The new port location planning is the essential part of the plan. The paper attempted to provide rational layout and planning for the Shanghai Maritime Center with proven scientific approach.Based on numerous surveys and studies, the paper introduced the current status of ports and piers in this area. Four necessary conditions are key to a maritime center: great demand for transportation, ideal location, enough berths and good channel condition as well as efficient internal and external operational environment. The definition of maritime center has following meanings: as a container shipping hub, its main function is to provide service to container transportation, it's one of the key momentum to promote flows of capital, techniques and goods of the region with the help of comprehensive market operation function.The paper put forward the necessity and possibility of establishing the maritime center, meanwhile, it analyzed and evaluated several different options by comparing their natural conditions, construction schemes and the overall situations of development. The paper set up a Multiple Criteria Group Decision Making (MCGDM) system and provided three options accordingly - 'Near Shore Model', 'Offshore Model' and 'Two Wings Model'. With the input of a great number of data and survey information, the MCGDM system adjustedthe criteria, comparative importance and weight while taking into consideration of various qualities and quantities such as shipping cost, investment scale, construction condition and development potentials, etc. The comments and recommendations on the options were resulted and a quantitative comparison became possible.It not only analyzed the cost of each option but also optimized the local container transportation network by comparing the shipping cost of each option, with the help of transportation network optimizing model and other techniques. As a result of the comprehensive analysis, the 'Two Wing Model' is the optimal plan.