1. THE ASSESSMENT OF INTERMODAL TRANSPORT IN COUNTRIES OF THE DANUBE REGION.
- Author
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Tadić, Snežana, Kilibarda, Milorad, Kovač, Milovan, and Zečević, Slobodan
- Subjects
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ECONOMIC status , *LITERARY form , *COUNTRIES , *INTERMODAL freight terminals , *ECONOMIC development , *DRAYAGE ,DEVELOPING countries ,DEVELOPED countries - Abstract
The development of intermodal transport (IT) systems is one of the global and European imperatives with the goal of mitigating logistics activities (especially transportation) negative impact on the environment, but also to improve the efficiency of logistics systems. Despite its importance acknowledged long ago, the treatment of IT greatly varies in different countries. In the developed countries, IT has an institutional character and clearly defined development directions, while in the developing countries, the problems of IT in most cases are ignored. The main scientific contribution of this paper is in being the first one to assess the status of IT in the countries of the Danube region. Seven criteria and six evaluation scenarios, that were not present in the existing literature in this form, are defined, which represents another contribution of the paper. The criteria are defined so that they would include the treatment of IT in strategic documents, the opinions of users and service providers, but also empirical/ statistical indicators of IT development degree. The evaluation scenarios differ in the criteria significance and the aspect of the problem. A novel hybrid multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) model, based on fuzzy SWARA and fuzzy MARCOS methods, is developed for the assessment, which represents an additional scientific contribution of the paper. According to IT results, the countries are grouped into five categories, micro-regions. The results indicate that with the degree of economic development the status of IT improves as well, so Germany and Austria are leading, followed by the Czech Republic, then by countries such as Hungary, Slovenia and Slovakia, while other countries fall behind greatly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2021
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