Multicriteria and multivariate analysis for port performance evaluation

Port services are key elements of a country's economy. They provide the necessary infrastructure for the development of industry, business and international trade. In this case, evaluating and improving their performance is essential to achieve international competitiveness. This paper presents a model for obtaining the performance of container terminals based on a multicriteria methodology. Factor analysis was used to reduce the number of criteria and ensure independence among them. The model has proved to be satisfactory in the ordering of container terminals considering the available data on major Brazilian ports from 2006 to 2009, according to the decision maker's values. The proposed method can develop applied models in the port area for any sector in order to evaluate performance. The results and the methodology are useful in supporting port authorities in providing incentives to achieve improvements in efficiency. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.