Proposing a system dynamic approach to assess and improve Italian ports competitiveness

Ports, as well as other important transportation infrastructures like railways, motorways and airports, play a great role in the economy of a nation, because, if properly managed, they can strongly affect the Country competitiveness and its economic development; this is true especially for Italy, which can take great advantage from its geographic position of peninsula. In fact Italy can heavily exploit seas using the so-called “Seas Highways” system – a series of alternative links between Northern and Southern Italy, and also Mediterranean Countries – devoted to lighten vehicular traffic on the most important Italian motorways (like the Milan-Naples or the Adriatic Motorway, just to quote two of the busiest), but also to reduce atmospheric pollution and to guarantee a cheaper way of transportation, especially for goods which are not perishable. Although also European Union is strongly recommending this solution, even inserting Seas Highways inside the Pan European Corridors (as “Corridor 21”), the Italian ports have many difficulties to face the international competition, especially with Northern Europe ports, despite their privileged position on the routes coming from the Far East, because of different reasons, first of all the inadequacy of the infrastructures internal and external to the ports (especially railroads, exploited a little respect to other European Countries), the high fragmentation of the Italian port realities (every Port has in Italy its own Port Authority), that causes fund dispersion and organizational problems, and a regulation out to date. All this problems are also amplified by the actual international economical crisis, which contributes to increase competition among the ports. For these reasons the authors are presenting a project proposal, in cooperation with the Italian University and Scientific Research Ministry, devoted to analyze the current situation of Italian ports and logistic facilities, underlining points of strength, points of weakness, opportunities and criticalities and analyzing the common factors of behavior of the ports considered. This is a prerequisite to define a simulation model implemented using the System Dynamics methodology, which is suitable for the study of high uncertain scenarios, as the Italian port reality is, allowing the formulation of so-called “What if” analysis. The aim of this model is to simulate the effects of the infrastructural, organizational and normative changes on the Italian port system, acting as a powerful Decision Support System (DSS) for all the stakeholders involved in the system, in order to identify a common solution devoted to improve Italian ports competitiveness.