Research approach. This paper investigates the existing ‘project’ or ‘risk’
management practices for large infrastructure projects in the transport and port sector
to examine their adequacy in an uncertain environment. After establishing that many
gaps exist in the traditional approaches, it puts forward an approach known as
Adaptive Port Planning that bridges the identified gaps. The implementation aspects
of risk and uncertainty management are outside the scope of this paper and we refer
to van Staveren (2007) for a detailed handling of the subject. This paper also includes
a comprehensive reference list over risk related literature.