Evaluation of the components of intelligence and greenness in Iranian ports based on network data envelopment analysis (DEA) approach

Purpose Creating green ports, while observing international and international standards and maritime conventions and regulations and moving toward smart ports, can increase the speed of goods transfer, enable the tracking of ships and goods, increase the transparency of statistics, increase the quality and capacity of ports and reduce costs. Hence, the purpose of this study the development and evaluation of ports play a key role in their commercial success. Development policies can be formulated for these ports by properly evaluating their performance indicators. On the other hand, traditional methods of performance evaluation cannot provide a good multidimensional evaluation of the status of ports. Design/methodology/approach More than 90% of the world’s heavy transit today is carried out by the sea. With this volume of freight, transit accidents are inevitable for ships passing through oceans, seas, waterways, rivers, ports and mooring at docks. Besides, gases from ships’ fuels at sea, especially in ports, oil spills due to maritime incidents, the negligence of the ship’s crew, the use of port equipment, dirty fuel of diesel power substations, etc., have increased greenhouse gases, polluted the environment and endangered human lives. Findings A new approach has been introduced in the field of port performance evaluation based on the components of greenness and intelligence. This approach performs evaluations in two stages and a network. In this study, the performance of 11 Iranian ports was evaluated based on the network data envelopment analysis approach in 2 stages of greenness and intelligence during 4 years. The results indicated that only 5% of the ports meet the standards of intelligence and greenness. Originality/value On the other hand, as shown in the above studies, the issue of green ports is directly related to the development of animal and plant ecosystems in the seas and the environment around ports. The presence of pollution in the ports has caused the animal and plant habitats around the ports to face a complete pollution crisis or to be completely destroyed. Therefore, the development of green port concepts in third world countries will help prevent environmental pollution of the seas. Therefore, it is necessary for ports to review their strategic maritime transport model and use the development of green port indicators in their implementation processes. Therefore, the strategic development of green ports is created to create and benefit from the components of intelligence, and as mentioned in previous research, intelligence and greenness are in line and the lack of development of one of the concepts causes defects in others. According to reports provided in Iran’s maritime transport systems, most accidents have led to environmental disasters during the absence of intelligent equipment. The use of smart technologies prevents all environmental damage and the development of port services. On the other hand, in evaluating the published articles in the field of development of green and smart ports, so far, the components of intelligence and greenness have not been evaluated and analyzed in a practical and operational way in ports and only the influencing the development of agents on each other has been done (Chen, 2019). Therefore, evaluating the efficiency of ports based on green components and intelligence causes ports to fundamentally review their executive infrastructure and take an active part in the global green development plan.