TOWARDS THE UNIFIED THEORY OF THE PORT GRAVITATIONAL AREAS INTRODUCING INFORMATION CENTRALITY FACTORS

A number of methods are available for determining the limits of port gravitational areas, geographic, geometrical, mainland-tariff method or total transport cost method. The basic drawback of this methods is that they take in the account either cost or geographical elements Unified theory of the port gravitational areas, under development at Maritime faculty Rijeka, takes into account other logistic elements which in today's transport conditions can be crucial in choosing the direction of the goods. This paper introduces information centrality factors used to identify communication levels between ports and their gravitational areas, and to define the levels of coordination in the logistic supply chain.