Prediction of modal shifts in export shipments from the Great Lakes due to mandatory ballast water treatment using game theory.

Mandatory ballast water management, resulting in an increase of required freight rates on the St. Lawrence Seaway, might bring modal shifts from the marine transportation mode to other modes. These modal shifts may cause several side effects, such as increased air pollution and lower transportation safety. In this dissertation, ballast water treatment requirements are surveyed and compared in terms of economic and environmental impact on the Great Lakes ecosystem due to the implementation of the requirements. The decision process confronted by the policy maker was modeled as a multiattribute decision problem. A multinomial logit (MNL) model was built to predict the changes in market shares of competing transportation modes due to the above measures. Two wheat transportation scenarios were studied. The results showed that only a small shift may, if at all, happen due to these mandatory ballast water treatment measures. However, the interactions among the marine, rail shipping industries, and the cargo owner cannot be represented by the MNL model. To discover the impacts of these interactions on the prediction, two game models, a two-player model, and a two-stage, three-player model, were built to predict modal shifts or the reduction of cargo amount. The results of the two game models were close to the multinomial logit model, due to a relatively low increase of marine required freight rates. The analytical solutions to the proposed two-stage, three-player game in symmetrical conditions are given. Random demand in the market was analyzed. The analytical solution to the decision making problem of the cargo owner was derived, and the algorithm to solve the two-stage, three-player game was presented. To circumvent the non-existence of the pure strategy Nash Equilibrium (NE) problem in many games, Equilibrium in the sense of Stability (ES) was introduced. To evaluate the trade-offs between the side effects brought by possible modal shifts and the Non-indigenous Species (NIS) invasion effects, a multi-attribute decision problem has to be solved. An Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP) model was presented to analyze the preferences of federal and state policy makers (legislators).PhDApplied SciencesBiological SciencesEnvironmental engineeringEnvironmental scienceHealth and Environmental SciencesLimnologyOcean engineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/123754/2/3096247.pd