Shipping Companies Research Articles

Maritime connectivity and agricultural trade

AbstractSeaborne shipping is the dominant mode of transport in international trade in agricultural products, and an increasing part of seaborne agricultural trade is carried in containers. Furthermore, the majority of world containers are moved through liner shipping services, that is, regular transport services provided by global shipping companies which comprise a dense network connecting ports and countries around the world. Using a theoretically consistent gravity equation and a novel identification strategy based on the use of intra‐national trade flows, this paper investigates the effect of liner shipping connectivity on international trade in agricultural products. The results show that liner shipping connectivity has a positive and statistically significative effect on agricultural trade. Moreover, this positive effect can be observed for the majority of the agricultural products analysed and is also identified for countries at different stages of development. These findings appear especially relevant in terms of the objective of increasing less developed countries' participation in global agricultural trade.

The Effect of Entrepreneurship Orientation on Innovation, Competitive Advantage and Company Performance on Shipping Companies

Covid-19 has spread to various countries and greatly impacted various companies, including shipping companies. Due to the pandemic, the Indonesian shipping sector is experiencing enormous uncertainty and pressure. This research investigates the effect of entrepreneurship orientation on innovation, competitive advantage, and company performance. Quantitative methods were used to analyze 127 shipping companies' leader insights. The sampling method used is probability sampling with a proportionate random sampling technique. The data was analyzed by Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analysis with a Partial Least Square approach using the Smart-PLS 3.0 program. Entrepreneurship orientation was found to have a significant positive effect on innovation and competitive advantage. Further, innovation has a significant positive effect on competitive advantage and company performance. Ultimately, competitive advantage has a significant positive effect on company performance, and entrepreneurship orientation has an insignificant positive effect on company performance. This research concludes that better management of entrepreneurship orientation will enhance innovation and competitive advantage while maximizing innovation will enhance competitive advantage and company performance. However, the seafaring activities during the pandemic are not intended to take many risks to the company's performance. Keywords: covid-19, entrepreneurship orientation, innovation, competitive advantage and company performance

An Interpretable Gray Box Model for Ship Fuel Consumption Prediction Based on the SHAP Framework

Shipping companies and maritime organizations want to improve the energy efficiency of ships and reduce fuel costs through optimization measures; however, the accurate fuel consumption prediction of fuel consumption is a prerequisite for conducting optimization measures. In this study, the white box models (WBMs), black box models (BBMs), and gray box models (GBMs) are developed based on sensor data. GBMs have great potential for the prediction of ship fuel consumption, but the lack of interpretability makes it difficult to determine the degree of influence of different influencing factors on ship fuel consumption, making it limited in practical engineering applications. To overcome this difficulty, this study obtains the importance of GBM input characteristics for ship fuel consumption by introducing the SHAP (SHAPley Additive exPlanations) framework. The experimental results show that the prediction performance of the WBM is much lower than that of the BBM and GBM, while the GBM has better prediction performance by applying the a priori knowledge of WBMs to BBMs. Combining with SHAP, a reliable importance analysis of the influencing factors is obtained, which provides a reference for the optimization of ship energy efficiency, and the best input features for fuel consumption prediction are obtained with the help of importance ranking results.

Data Flooding against Ransomware: Concepts and Implementations

Ransomware is one of the most infamous kinds of malware, particularly the “crypto” subclass, which encrypts users’ files, asking for some monetary ransom in exchange for the decryption key. Recently, crypto-ransomware grew into a scourge for enterprises and governmental institutions. The most recent and impactful cases include an oil company in the US, an international Danish shipping company, and many hospitals and health departments in Europe. Attacks result in production lockdowns, shipping delays, and even risks to human lives.To contrast ransomware attacks (crypto, in particular), we propose a family of solutions, called Data Flooding against Ransomware, tackling the main phases of detection, mitigation, and restoration, based on a mix of honeypots, resource contention, and moving target defence. These solutions hinge on detecting and contrasting the action of ransomware by flooding specific locations (e.g., the attack location, sensible folders, etc.) of the victim’s disk with files. Besides the abstract definition of this family of solutions, we present an open-source tool that implements the mitigation and restoration phases, called Ranflood.In particular, Ranflood supports three flooding strategies, apt for different attack scenarios. At its core, Ranflood buys time for the user to counteract the attack, e.g., to access an unresponsive, attacked server and shut it down manually. We benchmark the efficacy of Ranflood by performing a thorough evaluation over 6 crypto-ransomware (e.g., WannaCry, LockBit) for a total of 78 different attack scenarios, showing that Ranflood consistently lowers the amount of files lost to encryption.

Multi-Feature Fusion Method for Chinese Shipping Companies Credit Named Entity Recognition

Shipping Enterprise Credit Named Entity Recognition (NER) aims to recognize shipping enterprise credit entities from unstructured shipping enterprise credit texts. Aiming at the problem of low entity recognition rate caused by complex and diverse entities and nesting phenomenon in the field of shipping enterprise credit, a deep learning method based on multi-feature fusion is proposed to improve the recognition effect of shipping enterprise credit entities. In this study, the shipping enterprise credit dataset is manually labeled using the BIO labeling model, combining the pre-trained model Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers (BERT) and bidirectional gated recurrent unit (BiGRU) with conditional random field (CRF) to form the BERT-BiGRU-CRF model, and changing the input of the model from a single feature vector to a multi-feature vector (MF) after stitching character vector features, word vector features, word length features, and part-of-speech (pos) features; BiGRU is introduced to extract the contextual features of shipping enterprise credit texts. Finally, CRF completes the sequence annotation task. According to the experimental results, using the BERT-MF-BiGRU-CRF model for NER of shipping enterprise credit text data, the F1 Score (F1) reaches 91.7%, which is 8.37% higher than the traditional BERT-BiGRU-CRF model. The experimental results show that the BERT-MF-BiGRU-CRF model can effectively perform NER for shipping enterprise credit text data, which is helpful to construct a credit knowledge graph for shipping enterprises, while the research results can provide references for complex entities and nested entities recognition in other fields.

Fatigue during the COVID-19 pandemic: The experiences of Chinese seafarers

Though the COVID-19 pandemic is drawing to a close, very little is known about the impact of China’s zero-COVID policy on Chinese seafarers. This paper examines Chinese seafarers’ experiences of fatigue during the pandemic. It adopted a mix-method research design involving two quantitative surveys conducted with seafarers before and during the pandemic and 35 in-depth interviews with both seafarers and managers. All the participants were from two Chinese shipping companies. The comparisons between the two surveys show that Chinese seafarers experienced significantly higher levels of fatigue during the pandemic. The interview data suggest a range of factors underpinning the higher levels of fatigue including fear of being infected, increased workload, wearing of four-piece personal protection equipment (PPE), the deprivation of shore leaves, and the prolonged service time. More importantly, the data indicate that the draconian zero-COVID policy in China and the related policy guidelines for Chinese shipping companies and seafarers reinforce these factors. This research extends previous research by providing an exclusive and comprehensive examination of seafarer fatigue during the pandemic and revealing that the policies adopted by seafarers’ home countries can have profound implications for seafarers’ experiences of fatigue. Suggestions are provided at the end of the paper.

Sistem Pendukung Keputusan Pemilihan Perusahaan Ekspedisi Menggunakan Metode Analytic Network Process

CV. Wahana Gemilang Trans is a company that often uses transportation services from other shipping companies. The selection of a shipping company that involves many factors can be confusing. There are times when the shipping costs offered are quite affordable so that they can reduce shipping costs, but goods are often late, or claims for damaged goods take a long time. This problem can be solved by building a Decision Support System (DSS) application. The research used the Analytic Network Process (ANP) method. Variable data or assessment criteria for shipping companies taken from CV. Wahana Gemilang Trans, namely claims for damaged goods, shipping costs, delivery delay times, service for tracking orders and response speed. The first step is to make comparisons between criteria. Then this method looks for the weights for each criterion and ensures that the comparison of the criteria is consistent. After that, the value of each shipping company is calculated. The end result of the ANP method is the ranking of shipping companies, starting from the highest value to the lowest value. Applications can be used to choose the right shipping company in minimizing delivery delays, namely by analyzing the dependence between criteria, so that the best criteria are selected using the ANP method.

북태평양 어장에서 명태 어획을 위한 소형 중층트롤 설계 및 성능 분석

In the North Pacific, trawl fishing is mainly carried out for pollack. Fishing gear of a size suitable for these trawler specifications is important in the operation of fishing gear. In addition, large-scale Russian shipping companies with capital power in the North Pacific are currently introducing large trawlers. The fishing gear used here is mainly from Europe and is very expensive. Therefore, it is necessary to design trawlers and fishing gear suitable for small shipping companies. The purpose of this study is to calculate the predictive towing forces by using the main specifications of small trawler and to present a midwater trawl design. For the price competitiveness of the completed fishing gear, it was designed using polypropylene ropes and polyethylene nets. In addition, we propose a trawl design method suitable for the specifications of a fishing boat and present the utility of a kite.

Energetska politika Ruskog carstva na Balkanu krajem XIX i početkom XX veka

The article, based on the documents of the Archive of the Foreign Policy of the Russian Empire, files for the first time introduced into scientific circulation, reveals the plans of the Russian Empire for economic penetration into the markets of Serbia and other Balkan countries in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. A special place in the economic strategy of the St. Petersburg ruling circles in relation to the Balkan region was played by the activities of the Russian Danube shipping company, which was assigned not only a commercial, but also a political role, as one of the important factors in strengthening Russian influence in the Balkan countries, primarily in Serbia. In addition, the development of navigation along the Danube in the late 19th and early 20th centuries allowed the Russian Empire to gain a foothold in the oil markets of both the Balkan countries and Austria-Hungary and Germany. In 1914– 1915, military cargo was transported to Serbia in a Special Purpose Expedition headed by M. M. Veselkin, using the ships and barges of the Russian Danube Shipping Company. That was an important factor in Russian–Serbian military cooperation during the First World War

A Study of the Factors Affecting the Sustainability of Coastal Shipping Companies: from the Perspective of Safety

A Study of the Factors Affecting the Sustainability of Coastal Shipping Companies: from the Perspective of Safety

Strategies of stakeholders’ selection of shore-to-ship power in China

In the context of the global energy crisis and environmental degradation, ports are not only important hubs connecting water and land transportation but also major sources of energy consumption and environmental pollution. How to promote the transformation of ports to green and achieve sustainable development of ports has become the focus of attention in the world. As a major shipping country in the world, China attaches great importance to the issue of air pollutant emissions in port areas and has issued a series of policies on shore-to-ship power in recent years, but due to the lack of endogenous market dynamics, port, and shipping enterprises are not willing to use shore power, and the development of shore power technology is severely restricted. In the research of shore-to-ship power propulsion countermeasures, the existing methods mostly target a single subject and are mostly limited to a static perspective, focusing more on qualitative analysis, while lacking the idea of system modeling. Based on the interactions of the stakeholders involved in the promotion of shore-to-ship power, a game model of strategic choices of the stakeholders, namely the government, the port enterprise, and the shipping companies, is constructed based on evolutionary game theory. For obtaining the benefits matrix and the expected return of the stakeholders under various choices, the parameters in the game model are given. The stability theorem of differential equations is used to find the equilibriums of the choices’ games, and the stability of each equilibrium is judged. The evolution mechanism of the strategic choices of all the stakeholders for promoting shore-to-ship power is analyzed through system dynamics simulation in Matlab. The results show that the strategic choices of the government, the port enterprise, and the shipping companies affect each other greatly. Government policies have leading roles in the strategic choices of both port enterprises and shipping companies. An optimal fee range for shore power usage can encourage the growth of the shore-to-ship power system.

Performance Analysis and Public Services to Support Sailing Safety and Prevent Sea Traffic Accidents in the Shipping Lanes of L. Say Maumere Port

This study aims to determine the analysis of Performance, Public Service and Accident Prevention on Shipping Safety at the L. Say Maumere Port shipping lane. This research was conducted at the Class IV Maumere Harbormaster and Port Authority Office with Shipping Company Agents located at the Port of L. Say Maumere as the population. Data was collected through the methods of Observation, Literature Study, Interviews, Documentation and Questionnaires. The analytical technique used is based on the results of research and multiple analysis with the help of the SPSS V.26 program. Based on the results of research and multiple analysis, the following equation is obtained: Y = 0.106 + 0.376 X1, + 0.357 X2 + 0.256 X3 + . From the multiple linear regression equation, it can be seen that the most dominant variable that influences shipping safety is the performance variable (X1) with a regression coefficient of 0.376. With a coefficient of determination (Adjusted R²) of 0.730 or 73%, which means that the safety of shipping on the shipping lane of L. Say Maumere Port is influenced by the variables of Performance, Public Service, and Accident Prevention, which is 73% and other factors that affect Shipping Safety on the shipping lane. port of L. Say Maumere is 27%. Thus the results of the study indicate that Performance, Public Service, and Accident Prevention have a positive and significant impact on Shipping Safety at the L. Say Maumere Port shipping lane

Research on Stock Price of Two Listed Ship Companies

The development of the manufacturing industries is crucial to the countrys economic growth and technological development. In this study, the stock price return rate of two listed companies (JIANIANHUA and JIALEIBI) are selected as data, and the VAR model is established to conduct impulse response analysis and variance decomposition analysis on the data. We may also find the economic relations by analysing the 2 ship companiess stock under covid. Through the analysis of the results, the following findings can be given: first, VAR model indicates that the companies shows significant impact on each other. Second, in the cruise ship industry, both JIANIANHUA and JIALEIBIs stock price have strong self-adjustment ability. Third, JIANIANHUAs rate of return is less influenced by the rate of return of JIALEBI, while JIALEBIs rate of return is much highly influenced by JIANIANHUA. The papers findings might be helpful to related investors interested in the cruise ship industry.

Real-Time Risk Detection Method and Protection Strategy for Intelligent Ship Network Security Based on Cloud Computing

When studying an unfamiliar system, we first look for the symmetry that the system has, so that we can make many predictions about the possible properties of the system. The symmetry in ship network security needs to maintain a stable state and maintain a constant state of ship network security. With the rapid development of network information technology, smart ships have become a new hot spot in the international shipping industry. The smart ships cybersecurity discussion is also at the top of the list in the maritime field. More and more shipping companies feel that their smart ship systems need to be upgraded and the main reason behind this is that the systems are maliciously attacked by cyber hackers. Therefore, it is extremely important to detect and protect the security of intelligent ship network systems in real time. The issue of network security has always accompanied the whole process of the development of the Internet. At the same time, with the development of Internet technology, network hacking attacks against the Internet have never stopped developing, and traditional ship network security risk detection and protection cannot achieve good results. After understanding the operation mode of intelligent ship networks, this paper deeply studied the characteristics of cloud computing technology and proposed a real-time risk detection method and protection strategy for intelligent ship network security based on cloud computing. This paper mainly used multi-sensor nodes to analyze data containing malicious attack information and implemented self-execution protection strategy generation nodes to intercept and protect from the attack, so as to achieve the purpose of maintaining the network security of intelligent ships. Through experiments, the virus intrusion detection and defense rate of the algorithm proposed in this paper was able to reach 85% to 95%, while the virus intrusion detection defense rate of the traditional intelligent ship network security protection algorithm was 55% to 65%. The detection rate of the algorithm proposed in this paper was able to reach 96.95% and the false positive rate was 2.56%. The detection rate of the traditional algorithm was only 70.76%, while the false positive rate reached 4.69%. All of the proposed algorithm’s data were significantly better than that of traditional algorithms, which proved that the performance of cloud computing-based real-time risk detection and protection algorithms for intelligent ship network security was significantly better than that of traditional algorithms.

A Review on Observer Assistance Systems for Harvested and Protected Fish Species

Restrictions on competitive fishing activities due to the depletion of living marine resources and the monitoring of fish resources for the purpose of marine ecosystem research are supported by statistics on the protection of fish resources and ecosystem research, which are gathered through existing observer monitoring systems. However, in the case of deep-sea fishing vessels and special-purpose fishing vessels, some matters, such as collusive transactions with shipping companies and shipowners and threats toward the observer, are problematic, as observers are always active on board. Therefore, through the present study we would like to discuss the methodology and directions for research on the independent role of the observer and the methods for improving the reliability of data through systems that automate the monitoring of the acquisition of fish resources, which is expected to be a continuing problem. After an analysis of research trends for each issue related to the electronic monitoring system, future research directions are suggested on the basis of the findings, and for the research currently in progress, this paper presents the results from a prediction server and client and an image collector. In order to use these in the field in the future, as the detection method and reliability of the electronic monitoring system that can automate self-learning should be improved, we describe the image transmission technology, the image recognition technology for studying fish, and the methodology for calculating the yield.

The Knowledge, Perceptions and Attitudes of Seafarers in a Shipping Company on Occupational Hearing Health

ABSTRACT There is a scarcity of information regarding seafarers’ knowledge, perceptions and attitudes (KPAs) on occupational noise exposure and hearing health. This study aimed to determine the baseline KPAs of seafarers in a shipping company on occupational hearing health and noise exposure on board. This is a cross-sectional study, using an online questionnaire disseminated to seafarers in a shipping company. There were a total of 291 respondents, predominantly males. Only 15% of the respondents showed sufficient knowledge regarding occupational hearing health and noise exposure, but the majority know that long time noise exposure can damage hearing but can be prevented. Perceptions and attitudes were heterogeneous concerning their perceived susceptibility to hearing loss and perceived self-efficacy to protect from loud sounds. This study could provide insight into how to initiate awareness and educational modules for this population. Additional investigation will be needed to provide context and a deeper understanding of the perceptions and attitudes of the seafarers that will allow health education advocates continuity in improving their programs.

Optimization of captain’s safety management

The article is devoted to the maritime safety issues in terms of captain’s management activity. Effective and safe management of captains can be achieved by identifying the importance of considering psychophysiological factors in the selection of seamen personnel, including captains, in conjunction with their managerial qualifications and high level of legal culture (knowledge and real willingness to strictly follow legal prescriptions and regulations), and by using a formal safety assessment method in relation to maritime crew management risks.
 The authors made a conclusion that the causes of accidents are rooted in the conflict between two main components: subjective (behavior – managerial decision) and objective (vessel and situation), in fact, the captain's personality (or behavior) complies with the requirements of the situation or technical condition of the vessel.
 Psychophysiological selection aims to identify abilities and qualities that appropriate professions, accompanied by significant neuropsychological strain, the severity of stressful situations, etc. It appeared that reaction disorder play a decisive role in one-third of all accidents, ergo, psychophysiological selection can reduce maritime casualties by 20-25%. In this respect, the application of the formal safety assessment method in combination with psychophysiological selection in the context of optimizing captain's safety management is proposed. The authors considered the professional selection of captains based on stable psychophysiological states and qualification while assessing the risks via formal safety assessment methodology as a dual basis of the maritime safety.
 The functional dependence of maritime safety on the policy of the shipping companies is defined: a) risk assessment, which allows to connect legal norms of safety directly with actions of the captain as much as possible, based on modelling of a situation; b) personnel activity, carried out on the basis of professional and managerial abilities of captains and taking into account the psychophysiological states; c) the level of legal culture (knowledge and strict adherence to safety rules and regulations) of the captain, who operates within the commercial, social and safety sectors, based on the complex of legal rules and regulations governing these sectors.

The Effect of Business Strategy and Firm Reputation on Financial Performance and Its Implications for Shipping Companies' Stock Returns

The purpose of this research is to analyze the impact of business strategy and firm reputation on financial performance and its implication for stock return shipping companies. Important stock return to investors requires improvement through the business strategy, firm reputation, and financial performance. The research used a quantitative method and the data analysis used descriptive statistics and path analysis with the SmartPLS3 application. The total sample is 45 consisting of 9 companies with a 5-year observation period taken by purposive sampling technique and was listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange between 2015 and 2019. The result of the research shows, that there is a direct impact of business strategy on financial performance, there is no direct impact of firm reputation on financial performance, there is no impact of business strategy on stock return, there is a direct impact of firm reputation on stock return, and there is no direct impact of financial performance on stock return. Companies must be able to implement appropriate business strategies by taking into account their internal and external conditions to improve their financial performance. They also have to consistently maintain and enhance their firm reputation by continuously improving the whole organization's performance so that the capitalization of the stock market will increase as well.

Creating Exciting Content: A Descriptive Study of Pixbox's Digital Marketing Strategies on Social Media

Many companies have adapted their marketing strategies to focus on digital media to overcome the limitations of face-to-face communication. Pixbox, an Indonesian local shipping company, has created brand awareness through digital marketing, including social media platforms, to attract customers and promote their services. This study aims to determine how the Pixbox creative team creates digital marketing content on social media. The research used a descriptive qualitative approach, collecting data through interviews and analyzing them using qualitative methods. The study focused on the Pixbox marketing content creator team and their social media activities, using purposive sampling to select participants and qualitative data analysis techniques to analyze the data. This study indicated that in creating exciting content, the content creator team of Pixbox carried out three stages, namely the pre-production stage, trying to plan content by thinking about how the purpose of the content will be, the production stage as a stage of content creation strategy as well as publishing it. The post-production stage, as the content evaluation stage, shows that the achievement of content creation on social media has an impact on increasing Pixbox brand awareness/customers, which is targeted at young entrepreneurs. Pixbox’s content creator team creates exciting marketing content in three stages: pre-production, production, and post-production, successfully increasing brand awareness and customer orders. Suggestions for improvement include better planning and research in the pre-production stage, exploring other social media platforms, and constantly evaluating content creation.

Federated learning for green shipping optimization and management

Many shipping companies are unwilling to share their raw data because of data privacy concerns. However, certain problems in the maritime industry become much more solvable or manageable if data are shared—for instance, the problem of reducing ship fuel consumption and thus emissions. In this study, we develop a two-stage method based on federated learning (FL) and optimization techniques to predict ship fuel consumption and optimize ship sailing speed. Because FL only requires parameters rather than raw data to be shared during model training, it can achieve both information sharing and data privacy protection. Our experiments show that FL develops a more accurate ship fuel consumption prediction model in the first stage and thus helps obtain the optimal ship sailing speed setting in the second stage. The proposed two-stage method can reduce ship fuel consumption by 2.5%–7.5% compared to models using the initial individual data. Moreover, our proposed FL framework protects the data privacy of shipping companies while facilitating the sharing of information among shipping companies.