Onshore power supply (OPS) in Adriatic-Ionian ports: A multi-criteria prioritisation of readiness from structured port-authority judgements

Abstract

Onshore power supply (OPS) is increasingly mandated to eliminate ship emissions at berth, yet its feasibility varies sharply from port to port and weighing the competing factors is inherently a multi-criteria task. This article ranks the OPS readiness of six dissimilar Adriatic-Ionian ports - Ancona, Ploče, Durrës, Volos, Belgrade on the Danube and lakeside Ohrid - whose operations run from ferry, cruise and cargo traffic to lake tourism and which sit on both sides of the European Union regulatory boundary. A twenty-factor SWOT consolidated from a common multiple-case protocol is taken through hybrid SWOT-AHP elicitation completed by the six port authorities and a best-worst cross-check, then a TOPSIS ranking over seven readiness criteria. Every returned comparison set passes the consistency screen. The elicited weights put the funding opportunity and the capital-cost weakness first among the factors, and grid readiness and capital intensity first among the criteria; the resulting order - Ancona, Ploče, Belgrade, Volos, Durrës, Ohrid - holds at its head and tail under perturbation of the weights. The article delivers elicited regional priorities, a transparent and transferable prioritisation pipeline for heterogeneous ports and a ranked baseline for tracking the region's progress towards the 2030 obligations.