Spatial organization networks of world marine container transportation
全球集装箱航运的空间组织网络

Shipping companies are well aware of the growing importance in global container shipping network. Much attention is directed to the configuration and spatial system of container shipping service by studying schedule tables. In this paper, we chose 24 container shipping corporations, taking monthly container shipping schedule and 530 ports as studying objects, and constructed the spatial analyzing model and appraised the spatial regularity of marine container transport network in detail.This paper demonstrated that there are great diversities among the different regions and Northern Hemisphere. Especially, East Asia and Southeast Asia are the core regions of global shipping network. East Asia, Southeast Asia, Northwest Europe and east coastal region of North America become four port clusters of container shipping lines and schedules starting or calling, only several ports including Hong Kong, Singapore, Shenzhen, Shanghai and Kaohsiung located largely at East Asia and Southeast Asia have uppermost service ability. But global container shipping service system has not been yet developed and there are many regional container shipping networks, and three systems with hubs of Antwerp, Singapore and Hong Kong are most important. The spatial contiguity of marine container shipping networks is obvious and there are often two hub ports in a region. In some regions, there are two container shipping networks with north and south location on the same coast. But in several regions such as Mediterranean Sea, there is spatial configuration of multi-networks of container shipping service. Many literatures point out hub-and-spoke system has been developing in marine container transport. However this paper reveals that it doesn't yet develop a completed and pure hub-and-spoke system. But limited to observed ports and data, this paper could not reveal and describe accurately global container shipping networks, and the importance of some ports may not be reflected. Future study of container shipping network should pay more attention to shipping companies and complement data to modify the conclusion of this paper.