Incorporating Maritime Stakeholder Perspectives for Implementing an ‘Inland-Depots-for-Empty-Containers’ System Using an Analytic Hierarchy Process

Container movement involves several stakeholders where each group is focused on achieving its own objectives. By actively considering the perspective of different maritime stakeholders, this paper identifies a set of implementation strategies and prioritizes them to successfully implement an ‘Inland-Depots-for-Empty-Containers’ (IDEC) system in a region. It builds on the authors’ earlier work that developed and evaluated an IDEC system to minimize the overall system costs associated with regional repositioning of empty containers. Based on the benefits, costs and risks perceived by the involved maritime stakeholders on IDEC implementation, the authors identify strategies that may facilitate the building process and establish the system sustainably. They judge and prioritize the strategies in an Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) framework and present results based on their analysis. The authors believe that this research will benefit authorities considering an IDEC implementation strategy and also AHP practitioners.