The Impact Of Opening Arctic Northeast Passage On The Global Maritime Transportation Network

With the intensification of global warming,the acceleration of Arctic ice melting and the improvement of marine technology,and the initiative advancement of the "Polar Silk Road",the opening of the Arctic Northeast Passage has become increasingly urgent.The study of the impact of opening Arctic Northeast Passage on the global maritime transportation network pattern has far-reaching significance.For example,the port investment construction in the northeast passage and the Arctic countries,the formulation of trade policies and foreign strategic intentions of other countries or regions,and the promotion of the "Polar Silk Road" initiative.Based on the 2014 global container AIS data,35%of the maritime transportation in traditional passage from China,Japan,Korea to Northwest Europe is switched to the Arctic Northeastern Passage,then the global directed-weighted network before and after opening is constructed,and then established an evaluation system based on complex network indicators—including node degree,average path length,average clustering coefficient,modularity and PageRank index to analyze the changes in the basic characteristics of the maritime network,route changes,community changes,and changes in the status of ports within the community.Finally,the impact of the Arctic Northeast Passage on the global maritime network pattern is analyzed.Research shows that after the opening of the Arctic Northeast Passage:1)The small world characteristics of the global maritime network are more obvious.The topological distance between ports is reduced by 0.506,the average clustering coefficient is increased by 0.071,the scale-free characteristic of the network is weakened,and the low-value ports with the degree of 2,3,4,and 5 are reduced.It increased by 39.8%from the proportion of 32.6%.2)The global shipping network center moves to the northeast,moving north to a latitude of about 1.3°and eastward by a longitude of about 4°.The characteristics of the community in the shipping network are more obvious,and the gathering characteristics in the community are more obvious.In addition,communities on the east coast of the Atlantic split into two communities in Western Europe and West Africa,and new communities emerged in the Arctic.3)The status of some small ports in the northeast Asia community and the west Europe community,large-medium and large ports along the African coast in the Mediterranean community have risen;The status of ports in the Southeast Asia community near the Strait of Malacca,the western part of the Mediterranean community,the junction the West Europe and West Africa community,and most of the ports in the Middle East community have declined.