A customised dataset to assist legal and ethical governance of seaports

Attention to the legal and ethical principles of governance of seaport authorities (PAs) can enhance the future possibility of sustainable development of a port. This chapter presents a customised dataset and accompanying descriptions compiled from multiple sources and repositories that can be mined to provide adequate understanding over key decisional variables to assist the implementation of three Port State Control (PSC) mechanisms. Considerable care is given to the selection and combination of variables which may identify potentially serious accidents and the port's legal and ethical liabilities. The authors seek to clarify the relationship between the Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) of PAs and, what is possibly the most important issue facing PAs nowadays, the issue of security. In order to validate the relationship between PSC and CSR, the authors suggest the use of the Regression Approach in Time Series Analysis (RATS) method that offers an assessment of mutual impacts of the PSC variables and a forecast of future values of CSR. RATS would enable PAs to be aware of the CSR challenges occurring among partner ports at least one time-step ahead. This may represent an important advance in using decision support systems to assist managers in performing complex analyses and making strategic choices.