Title: Sustainable port innovations: barriers and enablers for successful implementation

Authors: Bart W. Wiegmans, Harry Geerlings

Addresses: Department of Transport and Infrastructure, OTB Research Institute for the Built Environment, Technical University of Delft, Delft, The Netherlands. ' Department of Public Administration, Erasmus University Rotterdam, P.O. Box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, The Netherlands

Abstract: The research question was: ||How can innovations make deep-sea ports more sustainable?|| If we focus on innovations that might reduce environmental problems, we can make two observations: it is especially those innovations that do not aim to improve a particular (part of) the port services that are able to reduce environmental problems; the remaining innovations can also reduce environmental problems, but only to a relatively limited extent. Innovations that could be successfully introduced on markets are: innovations that reduce the emissions from ships, transhipment equipment, and hinterland transport. From the point of view of product characteristics, user requirements, and innovation system, these innovations have the best performance and the most support from the actors involved.

Keywords: deep-sea ports; sustainable transport; sustainability; innovation; enablers; barriers; sustainable development; sustainable ports; port services; environmental impact; ship emissions; transhipment equipment; hinterland transport.

DOI: 10.1504/WRITR.2010.034664

World Review of Intermodal Transportation Research, 2010 Vol.3 No.3, pp.230 - 250

Received: 11 Jun 2009
Accepted: 18 Mar 2010
Published online: 14 Aug 2010 *

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