Safety evaluation of the ports along the maritime silk road

21st Century Maritime Silk Road (MSR) is of significant importance for world freight transport. The ports along the MSR present a key element of the involved shipping networks to support the connectivity of the MSR. Therefore, it is crucial to carry an effective safety assessment of the ports to ensure the robustness and sustainability of the growing MSR. However, traditional quantitative risk analysis approaches (QRA) used in ports face many challenges when being applied within the context of the MSR, such as risk data incompleteness and ambiguity, and operational and environmental uncertainties. This paper proposes a novel safety evaluation approach to address these issues encountered during the risk analysis process in the MSR ports. The fuzzy set theory (FST), an evidential reasoning (ER) approach, and the expected utility theory are integrated in a holistic way in the proposed methodology. The proposed methodology is used to analyse five key ports along the MSR. The results provide decision-makers with useful insights on enhancing port safety, effective route planning as well as improving operational efficiency.