A robust ranking of maritime connectivity: revisiting UNCTAD’s liner shipping connectivity index (LSCI)

Maritime connectivity is becoming increasingly important due to its inextricable relation to maritime trade, especially in the global economy. This paper presents a robust framework to rank countries on their maritime connectivity. Typically, in most index creation models, the arithmetic mean is used to build a composite index. In this paper, we propose a more reliable ranking approach, by applying the method of stochastic multicriteria acceptability analysis (SMAA). In this, we take into account the variability in the weights assigned to the connectivity factors, thus producing a probabilistic ranking for each country (i.e., the probability to achieve a certain rank). UNCTAD's ranking, based simply on the arithmetic mean, where all the weights are equal, becomes a special case of our approach. Our results show that China achieves the highest level of connectivity, followed by Singapore.