Site selection in dry ports: An application for Iran

Today, with the world becoming a global village and the emergence of concepts such as the last-mile delivery, the use of containers has raised enormously. Countries create dry ports in order to optimize their transportation systems and as a result, improve their competitive positions in global markets. Iran is a country with access to an ocean that is adjacent to the Central Asian landlocked countries. It has a transport system that will benefit the entire Central Asian region. On the other hand, this vast country has only access to the ocean from the south part. Therefore the need to build dry ports to transfer cargoes from the northern and central Iranian regions to ports and vice versa has arisen. In this study, after determining the necessary criteria for choosing a dry port location, Bam, Tabas, and Kermanshah cities in Iran were selected as three possible dry port locations. In the first part of this research, the concept of the dry port has been studied and in the second part, the concept of site selection and its importance has been explored. In the third part, using the AHP-TOPSIS research method, after comparing the three mentioned cities, Tabas was determined as the most suitable location to build a new dry port . Keywords: Dry port, Location Selection, Iran, Transportation, Logistic