Application Of A Hybrid MCDM Approach(AHP-TOPSIS) In Selecting Dry Port Location

A dry port refers to a logistics hub located in the inland area,with import and export container cargo transportation as the main business subject,and connecting to one or more sea ports through perfect and convenient road and rail transportation services,with all sea port functions except ship loading and unloading.Due to the irreplaceable role of dry ports in alleviating sea port congestion,enhancing the competitiveness of sea ports,expanding the inland hinterland and cargo sources of sea ports,and developing convenient sea routes for inland areas,China has paid more and more attention to the development of dry ports.It has been in the climax of dry port construction for many years.Reasonable site selection is the primary consideration in the construction of dry ports,because reasonable site selection can more effectively play the role of dry ports as an important force for enhancing regional integration and a key node in the modern logistics system.However,the location of dry ports is affected by multiple factors such as transportation needs,location conditions,transportation conditions,and policy conditions.Overall optimization based on consideration of all factors is an important prerequisite for reasonable site selection.Existing site selection studies are mostly aimed at traditional logistics hubs,and there are relatively few studies on site selection of dry ports,and the literature on site selection of dry ports fails to fully consider the operating and functional characteristics of dry ports,which is different from the traditional logistics hub location in terms of policy impact,business subject,transportation mode selection and the relevance with the sea ports.In this paper,the rational location of dry ports is taken as the research problem.By combining the operating and functional characteristics of this kind of dry ports,the evaluation index system of traditional logistics hubs location is optimized,to effectively solve the problems existing in the previous literature in the aspects of transportation demand,accessibility,transportation capacity and policy factor analysis,such as not aiming at the container source,not considering the railway transportation between dry ports and sea ports whether to select container trains,transportation frequency and policy condition index is lack of practical significance,and the decision-making method based on hybrid multi-criteria(AHP-TOPSIS)is adopted to solve the optimal location scheme.At the same time,by choosing the most competitive cities of Dalian Port and Yingkou Port in Tieling,Liaoyuan,Changchun,Jilin,Siping,Tongliao,Daqing,Qiqihar as research cases.The results show that the evaluation index system of dry port location is affected by the dry port construction model.In the evaluation index system,transportation demand is the most important influencing factor.Among them,the weight value of the export container value index is the highest;the importance of container trains and service frequency is second,and the importance of transport distance is significantly lower than before;road network density has minimal impact on dry port location.In terms of policy conditions,the customs clearance agreement between the hinterland and the seaport city is a very important indicator,which is also one of the main functions of the dry port that distinguishes it from other logistics hubs.In addition,in the selection of evaluation methods,if there is a need to solve the problems of multi-attribute indicators that cannot be compared at the same level due to dimensional differences,the coexistence of high / low optimal indicators,and there is no special requirement and limitation for the sample data to be evaluated.The final output needs to be presented in the form of global ranking,and the AHP-TOPSIS decision method proposed in this paper can be used.Based on the research carried out by dry ports,this paper improves the evaluation index system of traditional logistics hub location,and outputs reasonable location results by applying AHP-TOPSIS method,which not only provides an effective theoretical basis for the design of evaluation index system of dry ports location under different construction modes,but also forms an effective supplement for the research of port hinterland competition.