Border process design and operational risk in an emerging multinational corridor

Multinational transport corridors are increasingly promoted as instruments of regional integration and trade competitiveness. Yet when border and logistics processes are not adequately designed and coordinated, their operational performance often does not meet anticipated outcomes. This article examines how border process design shapes the potential for logistics inefficiency and operational risk in the Capricorn Bioceanic Corridor, a land corridor currently under phased implementation linking Brazil, Paraguay, Argentina, and Chile. Drawing on PM-CBC process-mapping outputs, the analysis examines 231 documented cases in which potential inefficiencies or opportunities for improvement were identified during the mapping of export, import, and transit procedures at border crossings. The findings indicate that the most frequently identified sources of potential operational risk concern process design, specifically in procedural sequencing, fragmented institutional responsibilities, manual documentation requirements, and limited system interoperability, rather than in physical infrastructure or staffing capacity alone. These design choices create structural dependencies that amplify delay, rework, and operational variability as traffic scales. The analysis shows how operational risk can be identified from border process design and contributes a process-based framework for diagnosing such risk in emerging corridors before their full operational integration, extending existing trade facilitation and corridor governance research. It further links these sources of operational risk to downstream consequences, including transit time variability, reduced predictability, inefficient resource utilization, and environmental externalities. The article demonstrates the value of process-based, early-stage analysis for identifying delay-generating process designs before they become locked into infrastructure, regulation, and organizational routines, with implications for emerging multinational corridors beyond the Capricorn Bioceanic Corridor.