Performance measure of a port-valley system: Data availability and their limits in freight transport and logistics

This article seeks to measure the performance of a complex geoeconomic system such as a port-valley. Public and private decision-makers involved in the development of a port-valley system need innovative methodological advances in freight transport data collection and production. This research fits into a development process of modelling frameworks in order to overcome different economic geography problems in freight transport and logistics. Within these frameworks, using descriptive statistics and time series analysis techniques, the purpose to be undertaken will allow for e¢ cient and robust indicators which will contribute to measure the performance of this type of geoeconomic system. The study of these spatial and temporal phenomena will be inspired by works in macroeconomics and evolutionary biology in order to provide a general framework that will simplify all stakeholders decision-making process. In the empirical studies, we will focus our attention on modelling (1) the dynamics of traffic registered by the seaports of a valley, (2) the synergy of the economic sectors present in a valley and (3) the main activities of stakeholders involving in specific transport and logistics sector of this valley. However, gaps in terms of availability of data in the fields of economic geography make it difficult to implement this kind of study and indirectly to measure the efficiency in stakeholders decision-making process. The construction of a database that will reflect current and historical situations of the port-valley activities stands out as a preliminary and inevitable step.