Research Information System
Balkan and Near Eastern Journal of Social Sciences, vol.10, no.4, pp.13-29, 2024 (Peer-Reviewed Journal)
The transportation of dangerous cargo by sea has become increasingly prevalent in recent years, largely due to the economic advantages offered by maritime shipping. The principal advantages of maritime transport are its affordability, safety and high load-carrying capacity. In recent times, containerised cargo has become a prominent feature of maritime transport, eclipsing other forms of freight transportation. Containers, the transport units used in container transport, are in high demand compared to other types of transport due to their durability and robustness. Additionally, containers allow for multi-storey stacking, which is a significant advantage in terms of space efficiency. It is possible to integrate container transports not only by sea but also by road, railway and, to a lesser extent, by air. Consequently, this represents a highly advantageous mode of transport in the context of multimodal logistics. The proportion of dangerous cargo transported in containers is on the rise, with international and national regulations governing the process. Despite the fact that the majority of dangerous cargoes are transported by container from warehouses and other facilities on the land side, the highest level of inspections and controls are typically conducted at the ports of gate. Containers transported by road or rail from the landside are prohibited from entering the port if they pose a risk to the safety of the port. Consequently, the gate procedures of ports represent a crucial aspect of security management. This study aims to examine the security management practices employed in the gate operations of container terminals in Turkey that handle containers carrying dangerous cargo. In this study, the regulatory criteria obtained by scanning international and national legal regulations and the security management systems applied in ports were compared. The importance ranking of the determined criteria was attempted to be determined by analysing the AHP method with the data obtained from the surveys conducted in the ports. The results demonstrated that the ports assign different priorities to the criteria determined in the gate operations.