A Dynamic Business Modeling Approach to Port Sustainability: The Western Sicily Port Authority Case

Ports are critical nodes in global trade and economic development, yet they generate substantial environmental and social externalities—including greenhouse gas emissions, air, noise, and water pollution, and adverse impacts on host communities—that demand integrated and forward-looking governance. Despite growing policy attention and the diffusion of green technologies, the systematic integration of sustainability into port strategic planning, governance, and performance management remains limited and fragmented. Existing tools—environmental indicator dashboards, Balanced Scorecard adaptations, and stand-alone System Dynamics applications—capture either the multidimensional nature of sustainability or its temporal dynamics, but rarely both within a coherent business-model architecture. This study addresses that gap by adopting and adapting the Dynamic Business Model for Sustainability (DBMfS) to the port context. The framework combines a sustainability-oriented Business Model Canvas with System Dynamics to map causal relationships among strategic resources, processes, performance drivers, outputs, and Triple Bottom Line outcomes. The framework is illustrated through an in-depth case study of the Western Sicily Port Authority. The analysis shows how the DBMfS can support port managers in revealing interdependencies, anticipating feedback effects, monitoring performance through hierarchically organized key performance indicators (KPIs), and aligning strategies with the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.