ABSTRACT
To assess the resistance of the shipping network of Chinese iron ore imports and the effectiveness of different safeguards, an invulnerability simulation model was established to fill the gap that traditional evaluation methods fail to consider the overall flow and nodes load state of the network. The data of a state-owned enterprise, major export ports in the world and major import ports in China were used to build the initial network. The network with different numbers of import ports was attacked in particular ways. The simulation results show that the network has a certain self-healing ability after the network is attacked, because of the adjusted ability of ship routes and redistribution of cargo load, but the network invulnerability will suddenly change after the key nodes are affected. The improvement of overload capacity has obvious marginal changes in improving network invulnerability if the overload capacity reaches a critical point, and improving the network survivability may aggravate network congestion. Therefore, it is necessary to strengthen the protection of key nodes, increase the number of import ports, and enhance the overload capacity of the ports, to enhance the invulnerability of the Chinese iron ore import shipping network under the COVID-19 and other critical events. Meanwhile, resources such as wharf yards and equipment should be reasonably allocated to prevent and deal with network congestion. Copyright © 2022 by Science Press.