A. Cansu Gök-Kısa, Pelin Çeli̇k and İskender Peker
Ports are the key elements of maritime transportation, which is crucial for world trade. Approximately 180 port facilities are located in Turkey. After 2007, 5 of the ports, which…
Abstract
Purpose
Ports are the key elements of maritime transportation, which is crucial for world trade. Approximately 180 port facilities are located in Turkey. After 2007, 5 of the ports, which are formerly owned by Turkish Republic Railways Administration (TRRA), are privatized. The aim of the study is to evaluate the performance of these privatized ports by multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) approach.
Design/methodology/approach
The application process is performed by a MCDM model. This model includes both criteria (dry bulk, liquid bulk, general cargo, container, RO-RO capacity, total port area, total berth, total berths length and depth) and alternatives (Mersin, Samsun, Bandirma, Iskenderun and Derince Ports). It determines the weights of the criteria by entropy and ranks the alternatives by ARAS and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) methods.
Findings
The results of entropy, ARAS and TOPSIS methods are compared. According to these results, “container” is the most important criteria while Mersin port has the best performance.
Originality/value
In the literature, most of the studies about this subject were analyzed by data envelopment analysis (DEA) and there are no studies had been taken into consideration ports that are owned by TRRA, in Turkey. Moreover, few of these studies used integrated MCDM models, and this is the first study that integrates entropy, ARAS and TOPSIS methods in this field.