Assessing adaptive port resilience through AIS trajectories: Insights from five global hubs

Traditional assessments of port resilience often overlook vessel scheduling dynamics within port areas and fail to incorporate spatiotemporal perspectives alongside statistical data, particularly under supply chain disruptions. This study integrates AIS data within Vessel Traffic Service (VTS) zones to propose a resilience assessment framework across five major global ports, evaluating vulnerability, robustness, and recoverability using one statistical indicator (throughput) and three spatiotemporal metrics (vessel count, transit time, scheduling frequency) during COVID-19.Through Seasonal-Trend Decomposition using Loess, the study quantifies disruption phases, revealing that vulnerability and robustness periods last 1.02–2.63 months, while recovery last 1.02–2.63 months. Among the cases, Shanghai exhibited the highest vulnerability, whereas Ningbo–Zhoushan and Singapore demonstrated the fastest recovery. Further, a threshold model reveals a nonlinear marginal relationship between throughput gains and port scheduling efficiency. Under high operational stress (>71.34 %), optimal VTS transit times (47.99–94 h) yield peak throughput of ∼68,000 tons per vessel. However, scheduling flexibility remains constrained by environmental and infrastructural limitations, particularly for large vessels at Hong Kong and Shenzhen. These insights demonstrate the value of real-time AIS analytics in capturing operational adaptability and guiding strategic planning to enhance port resilience in an era of growing global trade uncertainty.