Influence index analysis of inland waterway ports along the Yangtze River

The port performance index is an essential parameter for evaluating the performance of container ports and port selection. Many previous studies have investigated the methods of port performance index for seaports and focused on annual data analysis. Inland waterway ports located along the inland waterway have different functions compared with seaports that cannot use the previous method adopted for seaports to calculate the inland port influence index. To make a comprehensive analysis, this paper considers multiple years' worth of factors, including the facility of inland ports, urban economic and traffic factors. This paper introduces a group entropy weight method to evaluate the inland port influence index considering the multiple year data. A visualisation tool integrated with the group entropy weight method is developed to analyse the port performance index automatically. Twenty-seven inland waterway ports along the Yangtze River are considered as a case study for analysing their influence index. The management insights of the dynamic change of inland waterway port ranks are also discussed. [Submitted: 4 March 2024; Accepted: 28 June 2024]