Strategies for High Quality Development of Smart Inland Shipping in Zhejiang Province Based on “Four-Port Linkage”

Abstract

Currently Zhejiang ports have gradually changed from large-scale expansion to high-quality upgrading development, and gradually pay attention to the integrated development with railway, aviation, highway and other transportation modes. In 2019, Zhejiang Province proposed a new development pattern of “Four-port Linkage” with seaports (including inland ports) as the leader, dry ports as the basis, airports as the characteristics and infoport as the link, in which improving the basic service system of sea-river intermodal transport and optimizing the inland waterway network for sea-river intermodal transport are important contents, and cooperate with the requirements of the national outline for the development of inland shipping. With the navigation of a series of high-grade channels such as Hangpingshen Canal, Qiantang River, Hangzhou-Ningbo Canal and Oujiang River, the goal of inland shipping revival of “Upgrading north, unblocking south, opening east and revitalizing west” in Zhejiang Province has been basically realized, and all 11 cities in Zhejiang province are connected to the river and the sea. With the emergence of modern information technologies such as big data, IoT and 5G and the rapid development of multimodal transport, the development of smart inland shipping in Zhejiang Province greets new opportunities. This paper discusses the strategy of “Four-port Linkage” to help the high-quality development of Zhejiang smart inland shipping, from the perspectives of developing a comprehensive big data platform for inland shipping, developing a sea-river intermodal transport service information system, promoting the linkage of inland shipping information systems across provinces and cities, and suggesting smart inland shipping typical projects.