The influence of seaport operations on the coastal city environment

Abstract

The main objective of this research is to explore the influence of activities of a seaport on the carbon pollution of the surrounding city and suggest the adequate measures for its reduction. This paper focuses on the land-side area of the seaport by considering three kinds of emissions sources: cargo handling equipment, heavy-duty vehicles, and locomotives, as they pollute the seaport landside area and are included into the transport infrastructure of the city. The multiple methodologies were used in this research to confirm the environmental effectiveness, including the total frame of three approaches, the multiple case study to choose suitable evaluation methods, case study for verification of the proposed method, and the quantitative method to calculate the emission and inventories. A case study was carried out on the influence of the operations of Qingdao Port on Qingdao city. As a result, some measures of emission reduction are proposed for Qingdao Port to decrease CO2 produced by CHE, HDV, and RL through improving operation, such as using clean fuels, controlling emissions, encouraging the choice of the rail transportation, and developing dry ports.