Towards Resilient Re-Routing Procedures in Ports: Combining Sociotechnical Systems and STAMP

Truck congestion around international ports poses persistent challenges for safety, efficiency, environmental performance, and accessibility, particularly during container terminal disruptions when long queues of trucks accumulate. Traditional responses often address isolated components of the problem and fail to capture the interdependencies of sociotechnical systems, where multiple actors pursue partly conflicting goals. This study explores the usefulness of combining Sociotechnical Systems (STS) principles with the Systems-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes (STAMP) to analyze such complexity more holistically. Using the case of truck re-routing procedures during terminal closures at the Port of Rotterdam, structured interviews and document analyses were used to apply parallel STS and System-Theoretic Process Analyses (STPA). The STS analysis identified misalignments among procedures, actor intentions, infrastructure, and communication practices, clarifying why diversion protocols often fail in practice. The STPA complemented this diagnosis by modeling control relationships and feedback loops, identifying 92 unsafe control actions and 407 loss scenarios that informed 16 design recommendations. Together, the two approaches demonstrate how sociotechnical and control-theoretic perspectives can be combined to generate both diagnostic and prescriptive insights. The study highlights the potential of a combined STS–STPA framework as a transferable analytical tool for understanding and redesigning complex transport systems.