Parametric Assessment of Competitiveness of Commercial Sea Ports Based on Their Logistic Potential with the Use of the AHP Method

The article comes as a summary presenting one of the stages in the realisation of a project carried out at the Chair of Logistics at Gdańsk School of Banking (WSB Gdańsk) in the cooperation with Fachschule in Stralsund. The project concerns the use of multi-criteria decision models for assessing competitiveness of commercial sea ports based on their logistic potential. The project team, whose members have a lot of experience in the field of sea logistics gained during their long professional practice, has verified a preliminary concept representing a logistic model of a commercial sea port. The project team has also provided the analysis of the use of multi-criteria decision models for the assessment of the suggested model, in terms of the competitiveness of the analysed entities. The suggested model of the logistic potential of a commercial sea port is graphically interpreted and described with the use of a multi-criteria assessment sheet. It refers strictly to the factors which determine the macro-, micro-, and mezzo-economic levels of competitiveness presented by such an economic entity as a commercial sea port. The logistic potential of a commercial sea port is presented as a hierarchical set of criteria, sub-criteria and diagnostic features assessed at the level of the analysed installation, which is directly compared with other competitive installations. During the research and in the course of analyses, it has been decided that further assessment shall be performed with the use of the following method: the analytic hierarchy process of decision making. This method comes as an optimal instrument to provide mutual assessment of logistic potentials of the analysed entities which operate in particular sea areas. An adequate methodology has been also selected to comply with the suggested solution – it allows the authors to quantify the logistic potential of a commercial sea port in terms of its competitiveness.