Predictive Modeling For Port Retro-Area Management: Future Scenarios For Strategic Brazilian Ports

Abstract

Brazil hosts some of the most important ports in Latin America that represent key logistical cargo distribution for both national and international trades. The need for modernizing port infrastructure is a pressing issue for improving Brazilian logistic optimization, which includes accommodating larger vessels with greater cargo capacity, and has driven sustained investment in the sector. These investments have focused on expanding operational areas including storage, customs processing, maintenance, and distribution, as well as on the construction of new berths and logistics centers, to reduce bottlenecks, logistics costs, and enhancing port competitiveness. This study focuses on eight of the main ports in Brazil, selected based on their size, cargo throughput, and economic relevance, while also ensuring spatial representation along the Brazilian coastline. A spatial analysis is conducted for the period 2000 – 2022 within a 10 km buffer around each port, in order to assess land use and land cover (LULC) changes in the period and feed a predictive model to deliver scenarios for the next decade. The simulations for 2032 are developed under two scenarios. The first represents a trend based projection, while the second incorporates territorial and environmental constraints, including indigenous lands, marron territories, speleological heritage areas, and legally protected environmental areas such as federal and state conservation units. These constraints are applied either totally or partially, depending on the level of legal protection and the regulatory framework established under current Brazilian legislation. The premise of finding significant differences in the future pattern of land use occupation when contrasting the socio-environmentally conservative scenario with the scenario governed by the trend of continuous territorial transformations was not fully satisfied. The results indicate differences between the two scenarios. In addition, some ports exhibit physical constraints to expansion, either due to the full occupation of available land or their proximity to urban and industrial areas. This finding suggests that future port capacity growth will depend less on immediate port back-land expansion and more on the development of inland infrastructure, implying increased investment in intermodal transport systems.