Visualizing maritime connectivity at national level: The case of LSBCI links of West European countries

The Liner Shipping Bilateral Connectivity Index (LSBCI), proposed by UNCTAD1, aims to measure the quality of maritime transport connections between countries. Although its main geographical scope is developing world, it increasingly used scholars and practitioners within context developed But relevance applicability remain be assessed. As a first step in this direction, paper proposes visualization LSBCI based on Multi-Dimensional Scaling (MDS). focused 10 West European countries among them with rest world. MDS clearly shows core periphery containerized shipping network. While some proximities can explained proximity, others exclusively result from other factors such market structure network considerations.