Methods for the evaluation of factors affecting port generations

Various factors define port performance. The globalization of trade has greatly increased the role of ports and their functions. The topic that arises is linked with the main functions that the port carries out, because the performance of the ports depends on them, with significant indicators such as the times of ships and freight inside the ports. International scientific literature has defined multiple factors to classify ports. The most discussed and used classification is the one proposed by UNCTAD, with the classification by successive generations. The factors present in the literature are of disaggregate type and do not allow the class of the generic port to be directly identified. This note introduces a method by which macro factors are defined and evaluated, specifying the declination of macro factors for each generation of ports. The result obtained is to identify the generation of the individual port based on the macro factors, allowing to carry out single or comparative analyses, related to other ports of the same generation, on the performance of the port itself. The results are interesting because they allow us to identify belonging to a generation and therefore types of cargo and ships that can optimally use the port.