Global Standards and Protocols for Port Aquatic Environment Assessment and Management: An Integrative Review

Jingpu Fan; Xin Yuan; Yulin Kang; Emmanuel Menyoli Molua; Linlin Wu; Shanwei Sun; Xiyu Cheng; Guangwei Wang; Changsheng Guo; Jian Xu

doi:10.53941/eesus.2026.100018

Abstract

Port operations have been widely recognised as posing significant risks to adjacent aquatic environments through diverse pollution pathways. In response, contemporary port environmental management has been anchored in two foundational pillars: water quality assessment and ecological-integrity evaluation. In this review, prevailing international standards and state-of-the-art methodologies for assessing port waters and aquatic ecosystems were systematically synthesised. The application contexts for each approach were delineated, and the coherence of respective frameworks was appraised through comparative analysis of strengths and limitations. It was found that, although mature systems have been established for water-quality and ecosystem-integrity assessment when applied independently, these systems remain poorly integrated in practice, leading to partial environmental diagnoses. Accordingly, future progress is considered to hinge on the development of an integrated framework that explicitly couples water-quality metrics with ecological-integrity indicators. This review provides a theoretical basis and practical recommendations for comprehensive port aquatic environmental management and pollution control.

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