Hierarchical structures of hub ports in the global container shipping network based on centralities analysis

Hub ports have growing importance to the global container shipping network gradually, but there is not a perfect method to evaluate the roles of container ports in the global container shipping network. In this paper, 10 liners’ shipping schedules in reality are investigated as the sample data to construct a global container shipping network based on L-space model, then the degree centrality, the closeness centrality, the betweenness centrality and the eigenvector centrality are used to measure the “organizational capacity”, the “shipping accessibility”, the “transit capacity” and the “development potential” of each container port respectively, the K-means clustering results for hierarchical structures of hub ports in the global container shipping network based on correlation analysis show that (1) 3 kinds of hub ports in the global container shipping network including the “global hub ports”, the “regional hub ports” and the “sub-regional hub ports” are formed to serve the global maritime trade; (2) of most interest thing is that most of “global hub ports” and “regional hub ports” are located in East Asia, where has grown as the core region of the global container shipping network; (3) another spatial characteristic is explored that hub ports are often located along the main east-west or north-south shipping trunk lines which have important influence to the global maritime trade.