Trading Community Analysis of Countries' Roll-On/Roll-Off Shipping Networks Using Fine-Grained Vessel Trajectory Data

Roll-on/roll-off vessels (RO/RO vessels) are playing an increasingly critical role in international automobile transport, facilitating the efficient movement of vehicles and heavy machinery across continents. Despite this growing significance, there is still limited research specifically focused on the RO/RO shipping network and its impact on global trade. This paper studies the global RO/RO shipping network using AIS data on RO/RO vessels collected from 2020 to 2023. We construct a method based on the complex network theory and the graph feature extraction method to quantitatively assess the features of the RO/RO shipping network. This method assesses the complexity, sparsity, homogeneity, modularity, and hierarchy of the RO/RO shipping network across various ports and countries and employs the graph convolutional neural network (GCN) model to extract network features for community detection. This process enables the identification of port clusters that are frequently linked to RO/RO vessels, as well as regional transport modes. The paper's findings support these conclusions: (1) From 2020 to 2023, the number of nodes in the RO/RO shipping network increased by 22%, primarily concentrated in African countries. The RO/RO shipping network underwent restructuring after the pandemic, with major complex network parameters showing an upward trend. (2) The RO/RO shipping network is complex, with a stable graph density of 0.106 from 2020 to 2023. The average degree increased by 7% to 4.224. Modularity decreased by 6.5% from 0.431 in 2022 to 0.403, while the hierarchy coefficient rose to 0.575, suggesting that post-pandemic, community routes have become more diverse, reflecting the reconstruction and maturation of the overall network. (3) The model yielded a silhouette coefficient of 0.548 and a Davies-Bouldin index of 0.559 using an improved automatic feature extraction method. In comparison between 2020 and 2023, the changes in the two indicators are small. This shows that GINs can effectively extract network features and give us results that we can understand for community detection. (4) In 2023, key communities divide the RO/RO shipping network, with one community handling 39% of global routes (primarily Europe-Asia), another community handling 23% (serving Asia-Pacific, Africa, and the Middle East), and a third community managing 38% (linking Asia, Europe, and South America).