Scandinavian Working Papers in Business Administration

Discussion Papers,
Norwegian School of Economics, Department of Business and Management Science

No 2025/4: The Cost of Weather: Modeling Weather Delay in Bulk Shipping

Vegard Enerstvedt ()
Additional contact information
Vegard Enerstvedt: Dept. of Business and Management Science, Norwegian School of Economics, Postal: NHH , Department of Business and Management Science, Helleveien 30, N-5045 Bergen, Norway

Abstract: Weather is an ever-present factor influencing shipping operations at every stage, including port operations. This paper examines the determi nants of weather-induced delays in port operations, the probability and duration of such delays, the predictive capability of various statistical models, and the potential for improving upon standard industry methods for estimating port margins. A wide range of models are investigated, including Generalized Linear (GLM) models, Cox Propotional Hazard models, and Autoregressive Conditional Duration (ACD) models. The findings reveal that a GLM with gamma distributed dependent variables provides the best fit for data on delay duration, while a linear multiple regression offers the highest predictive accuracy for delay duration. Similarly, probit and logit models are found to perform comparably well for both predicting delay probabilities and data fit. Moreover, the analysis demonstrates that there are significant potential cost savings when using a linear regression model with a probit model to predict delays compared to a common industry rule-of-thumb of half a day delay. These results underscore the potential for improving operational efficiency and accuracy in port margin estimation through statistical modeling techniques.

Keywords: Weather; Shipping; Risk; Delay; Ports; ACD; GLM

JEL-codes: C40; C41; C53; R40; R41

Language: English

40 pages, February 4, 2025

Full text files

3176200 PDF-file Full text

Download statistics

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Stein Fossen ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

RePEc:hhs:nhhfms:2025_004This page generated on 2025-02-22 04:36:21.