Sustainable Maritime Transport Research Articles

Regulatory compliance and operational efficiency in maritime transport: Strategies and insights

In recent years, with increasing maritime trade, the shipping industry has faced the challenge of mitigating escalating greenhouse gas emissions. This study investigates the cost mitigation strategies of shipping companies in response to three key regulations: the Carbon Intensity Indicator, the EU Emissions Trading System, and the FuelEU Maritime regulation. By proposing optimal speeds for container ships on the Asia–Europe route and examining the potential for carbon leakage, the study aims to predict strategies of shipping companies and derive insights for achieving sustainable regulatory compliance. The results provide a comprehensive analysis of the regulations' impact on operational costs and emissions, with the robustness of the findings confirmed through extensive sensitivity analyses. The discussion highlights the unintended consequences of current regulations that may deviate from the ultimate objectives of reducing GHG emissions and achieving sustainable maritime transport. Ultimately, the study seeks to support the development of effective maritime regulations that align with the operational strategies of shipping companies, emphasizing the need for a holistic approach to achieve the intended outcomes of environmental policies.

Managing port disruption through sailing speed optimization for sustainable maritime transportation

Ports, as nodes in maritime transportation, frequently face disruptions leading to congestion, adversely affecting the efficiency and sustainability of the global supply chain. This study considers the speeding-up strategy to alleviate port congestion. We model the transportation network as a closed Jackson network and adopt a tailored mean-value analysis algorithm to solve the model. To deliver the increased sailing speed, we further put forward a bi-section search algorithm. Our numerical analysis results demonstrate the feasibility of increasing speed to alleviate port congestion. However, when port congestion exceeds a certain threshold, the system faces collapse, rendering the increase in speed ineffective. Additionally, we recommend shipping companies consider using clean energy when employing the speeding-up strategy to mitigate congestion, thus safeguarding the environment. Our study combines theoretical methodologies and analytical models, providing insights regarding speeding up the vessels. The findings of this study offer guidelines for real-world sustainable maritime practice.

A Comprehensive Analysis of Structural Alternatives and Local Opening for a 2000 TEU Green Methanol-Powered Container Vessel

In the context of global trade and environmental concerns, this research focuses on examining the influence of the principal dimensions of a container feeder vessel whose propulsion has been modified to operate with green methanol. Methanol emerges as a sustainable marine fuel, reducing emissions and dependence on fossil fuels. The study comprehensively examines the structural challenges posed by container ships, with a particular focus on torsional stresses and hydroelasticity effects. A significant novelty of this study is the inclusion of a comparative structural analysis evaluating how changes in the vessel’s main dimensions impact its structural response. This analysis sheds some light on crucial insights into the effects of structural modifications required for accommodating these changes, ensuring the structural strength of these vessels. The research also underscores the impact of permanent and transient springing and whipping phenomena on fatigue damage. The study’s significance lies in its role in the ongoing transition to sustainable maritime transportation, as it not only examines structural challenges but also provides solutions for achieving an optimal structural configuration in this new era of environmental responsibility.

Emerging Dynamics of Training, Recruiting and Retaining a Sustainable Maritime Workforce: A Skill Resilience Framework

The maritime industry is regarded as the fulcrum of the global economy. It contributes significantly in diverse ways to the movement of goods. To effectively deliver on its mandate, maritime transportation needs to be sustainable. In the absence of a resilient and highly adaptive workforce; however, it is impossible to address the tangible set of economic, environmental and social expectations for the sector. From a human capital perspective, this paper explores the emerging dynamics of producing a sustainable workforce for global maritime transportation. Results from a recent study involving 305 ship officers (web-based survey) are compared with new changes (from academic sources and industry reports) in the maritime transportation sector. The comparison (findings) highlights emerging changes within the global maritime workforce and the implications for skill development. It also emerged that the shortage of highly skilled talent (on both the landside and seaside) is a critical challenge and is being exacerbated by growing industry changes. Ultimately, these developments endanger sustainable maritime transportation. Consequently, the paper proposes a skill resilience framework with which industry stakeholders could identify skill gaps among the workforce and improve training content to produce an adaptive workforce capable of handling emerging challenges.

Sustainable Maritime Transportation Operations with Emission Trading

The European Union (EU) has recently approved the inclusion of shipping in its Emissions Trading System, aiming to foster sustainable development within the shipping industry. While this new policy represents a significant step towards reducing carbon emissions, it also poses challenges for shipping companies, particularly in terms of operation costs. To assist shipping companies in devising optimal strategies under the new policy, this study proposes new techniques to determine the optimal solutions for sailing speed and the number of ships on the route, covering both EU and non-EU areas. Additionally, we demonstrate how to adjust these optimal decisions in response to changes in charged fees, fuel prices, and weekly operational costs of ships. This research offers innovative insights into the optimal decision-making process for shipping companies under the new EU policy and serves as a valuable decision-making tool to minimize total costs.

Simulating Operating Performance of Alternative Configurations of LNG Bunkering Stations

Recently, due to the great need to promote environmentally sustainable maritime transport, alternative energy sources to traditional fossil fuels have been proposed to reduce ship emissions. Among few alternative scenarios, most experts recognize Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) as the most promising solution in the short to medium term. However, there are still some critical issues related to the future expansion of bunkering stations and the LNG-fuelled fleet. Firstly, there is the need for a sufficiently extensive international network of bunkering facilities. Secondly, the layout and location of bunkering stations impact the efficiency of ship bunkering operations, cost reduction and the safety of the surrounding areas. Last, the in-progress Russian-Ukrainian conflict is causing serious unbalances in gas supply and prices, especially for Europe. Specifically, in the case of Italy, gas imports represent the seventh most imported commodity. Due to the changed geopolitical scenarios, interest has arisen in investigating the technical and operational characteristics of LNG bunkering stations and comparing different configurations with a view to increasing Italy’s independence from other foreign countries, focusing on degasifies that could promote new infrastructures that make available LNG in ports. In this paper we highlight the importance of reducing ship emissions and investigate some technical and operational characteristics of LNG bunkering stations. We present a simulation study to analyse quantitatively the operating performance of different LNG bunkering technologies in a port terminal and their impact on the efficiency and overall cost within the whole goods’ supply chain. In particular, we evaluate and compare bunkering time, throughput and refuelling costs in alternative layouts, referring to marine terminals located near urban areas. The aim of this research is to verify whether ports with infrastructure embedded in metropolitan areas could provide, safely, a valuable contribution to the green transition by efficiently handling an adequate level of LNG supply, especially referring to the present Italian interest in increasing independence from foreign countries. For this purpose, we present four dynamic discrete event simulations of all the main LNG bunkering configurations and present their dynamic performance sampled over two consecutive years after a warmup period of 6 months. The simulation conceptual models have been created by the authors based on analyses of those configurations and then processed and implemented within the simulation software Witness Horizon 23®, used for experimentation. This is the first time that a simulation study is presented for comparing different configuration of LNG bunkering stations. The results presented here confirm that simulation is a key science to address these complex problems and it represents a major added value for the development of new infrastructures embedded in supply chains and able to favour green transition. Concerning the present study, the simulation output reveals that, although the increase in the price of LNG over the past year has had a strong negative impact on the propensity to activate LNG refuelling stations at maritime terminals, Truck-To-Ship, or Ship-to-Ship with small feeder ships, and Port-To-Ship configurations appear to be flexible and particularly suitable for port terminals located near urban areas. However, the final the choice of the most suitable LNG bunkering station requires further and specific inside investigation as well as considerations on the Decision Maker Strategies and Attitudes.

A bibliometric analysis of scientific research trends in monitoring systems for measuring ship emissions.

The maritime sector plays a key role in transportation in the world, and over 90% of world trade is carried by ocean shipping. However, ships are large contributors to global emissions. Hence, a vast majority of research publications have focused on different emission monitoring techniques, which are essential to establishing required policies and regulations that reduce maritime transport emissions. Various documents have been published on monitoring maritime transport emissions affecting air quality since 1977. This paper presents a bibliometric analysis to explore evolution trends, gaps, challenges, and productive countries, as well as the most cited publications with high scholarly impacts. The annual growth of 9.64% in publications demonstrates an increasing interest in reducing maritime vessel emissions. Journal articles constitute 69% of publications, followed by conference papers (25%). China and the USA play a leading role in this field of research. Regarding active resources, the "Atmospheric Environment" journal accounts for the highest relevant publications, H-index, and total citations. Eventually, the temporal evolution of keywords shows the increasing trend towards sustainable maritime transport.

Ammonia-based green corridors for sustainable maritime transportation

Decarbonizing maritime transportation will require huge investments in new technologies and infrastructure for the production, distribution, and utilization of alternative marine fuels. In this context, the concept of green shipping corridors has been proposed, where a green corridor refers to a major shipping route along which low- and zero-carbon maritime transportation solutions are provided. In this work, we conduct a global analysis of green shipping corridors by designing a network of alternative fuel production sites, transportation links, and bunkering ports that can support a large fraction of the global marine fuel demand. We choose green ammonia to be the alternative fuel as it has received significant attention as a potential carbon- and sulfur-free marine fuel that can be produced entirely from renewable resources. Our study identifies the most suitable locations for producing and bunkering green ammonia, examines the trade-off between ammonia production and transportation costs, and highlights the extent to which local reduction in production cost can lead to a competitive advantage in a future green ammonia market. We also demonstrate the value of our global network optimization, which considers many shipping routes simultaneously, in capturing potential synergies and trade-offs across different routes and regions. This work provides insights that can help inform decisions in establishing future green shipping corridors around the world.

Assessment of human error contribution to maritime pilot transfer operation under HFACS-PV and SLIM approach

Human factor plays an important role in sustainable maritime transportation. Human errors are the leading cause of death or injuries during maritime pilot transfer operations despite international regulations. This paper proposes a hybrid human factors analysis model, comprised of qualitative and quantitative approaches by combining Success Likelihood Index Method (SLIM) and Human Factor Analysis and Classification System (HFACS) methods, to obtain the seafarers’ errors in the pilot boarding and disembarking. Human errors in the maritime pilot transfer process are determined by examining accident reports, literature reviews and expert judgments. Accidents and near misses are often poorly reported in the maritime industry. Therefore, determining human error probability (HEP) is of paramount importance in maritime transportation. This paper conducts an empirical human error prediction for a maritime pilot transfer operation to enhance operational safety and minimize human errors, providing a methodological extension through the integration of the HFACS technique into the SLIM. Utilizing HFACS and SLIM constitutes the unique contribution of this paper by predicting the possibility of human error since it presents the first application of the maritime industry. Thus, possible loss of life and injury will be prevented, the sustainability of maritime safety will be contributed, and pilots will be provided to work in a safe environment.

Short Sea Shipping, Multimodality, and Sustainable Maritime Transportation

Short sea shipping is an important research topic and is of practical interest for the shipping and transport industries in many regions across the globe [...]

Optimalization of Smart Technologies in Improving Sustainable Maritime Transportation

The geographical constellation of Indonesia among Asia and Australia as well as among Indian and Pasific ocean has an important role in sea transportation internationally and domestically. This paper is aimed to elaborate the advantage of geographical constellation in relation with sea transportation, to discuss the Indonesia policies on sea transportation and to challenge the smart technology for answering the challenges. The discussion began with six areas of Indonesian policies such as: competitive sea transportation, connectivity, seperti infrastructure, compliance on safety and security, law enforcement and integration in organizational management. The paper also gave example on how currently information technology applied on Inaportnet, National Logistic Ecosystem, Sitolaut and harzadous and harmful substances management system. Further research to support each of six areas on the context of smart technology need to be developed.

An interval type-2 fuzzy SLIM approach to predict human error in maritime transportation

The human factor is regarded as one of the most significant topics for sustainable maritime transportation since increasing shipping activities can pose potential hazards to human life, the environment, and commodity. The paper aims to assess the potential contribution of human errors in the maritime industry. Hence, Success Likelihood Index Method (SLIM) was employed by incorporating interval type-2 fuzzy sets (IT2FSs). While SLIM systematically estimates human error probability (HEP) for the designated task, IT2FS deals with subjectivity in the process of using experts’ judgements. A loading operation onboard containership was investigated due to its considerable risks for the marine environment. Safety culture, experience, fatigue, and time limitation were observed as highly effective on crew performance. The obtained results indicate that the IT2FS-SLIM approach can effectively be applied for determining the vulnerabilities and critical human errors in the operational process. The paper is also intended to enhance safety control levels and minimize potential errors in maritime transportation.

Power-to-Ships: Future electricity and hydrogen demands for shipping on the Atlantic coast of Europe in 2050

The Atlantic coast of Europe has very high demand for maritime transport, with important commercial ports and tourist areas that emit significant amounts of greenhouse gas emissions. In an effort to address this, the impact of electric and H2 ships for freight and passenger transport along the Atlantic coast on the European energy system in 2050 is analyzed. An optimized energy supply model is applied, which envisions a cost-optimal infrastructure with 100% renewable energy across all of Europe, employing hydrogen as an energy vector. To achieve this target, a minimization of the total annual costs to supply electricity and hydrogen demands is carried out. The obtained results indicate that Ireland will play a key role as a hydrogen supplier as ship demand rises, increasing onshore and electrolyzer capacities, mainly due to comparable low-cost renewable electricity production. The preferred supply routes for Irish hydrogen will be pipelines through the United Kingdom and France to export energy to continental Europe. An increase in salt cavern storage capacity in the United Kingdom, central Europe and Spain is observed. H2 and electricity are shown to be essential for the deployment of more sustainable maritime transport and related activities on the European Atlantic coast.

A Contribution to the Sustainable Development of Maritime Transport in the Context of Blue Economy: The Case of Montenegro

Maritime transport and sustainable development require a recognizable global approach. The state, as the dominant structure in the world, enables the realization of sustainable maritime transport aims through its instruments. Therefore, it is very significant to consider the national maritime policies because the effective implementation of the global policy is impossible without considering the adequate mechanisms at the state level. The adopted Montenegrin strategic documents impact the institutional framework set-up of the Blue Economy (BE) sectors and potentials for ecologically sustainable maritime transport. Although there are no practical directions for the sustainable use of sea resources, Montenegro is affirmatively oriented to the BE concept. Knowing that Montenegro is in the process of the pre-accessing EU phase, it is of importance to be on the right road to creating a national maritime transport policy including environmental practices, to become part of the strategic implementation of the BE. The paper provides recommendations that can serve for the successful follow-up of the BE activities in Montenegro and the wider area.

Fuel Cell Power Systems for Maritime Applications: Progress and Perspectives

Fuel cells as clean power sources are very attractive for the maritime sector, which is committed to sustainability and reducing greenhouse gas and atmospheric pollutant emissions from ships. This paper presents a technological review on fuel cell power systems for maritime applications from the past two decades. The available fuels including hydrogen, ammonia, renewable methane and methanol for fuel cells under the context of sustainable maritime transportation and their pre-processing technologies are analyzed. Proton exchange membrane, molten carbonate and solid oxide fuel cells are found to be the most promising options for maritime applications, once energy efficiency, power capacity and sensitivity to fuel impurities are considered. The types, layouts and characteristics of fuel cell modules are summarized based on the existing applications in particular industrial or residential sectors. The various research and demonstration projects of fuel cell power systems in the maritime industry are reviewed and the challenges with regard to power capacity, safety, reliability, durability, operability and costs are analyzed. Currently, power capacity, costs and lifetime of the fuel cell stack are the primary barriers. Coupling with batteries, modularization, mass production and optimized operating and control strategies are all important pathways to improve the performance of fuel cell power systems.

Research topics and trends in the maritime transport: A structural topic model

Maritime transport is considered as the lynchpin of global trade. In the past decades, a large number of academic articles in the maritime transport field have been published. This study aims to provide a comprehensive review of the development of maritime transport research. A structural topic model (STM) is adopted to analyze the research themes and trends in the maritime literature. STM is a text mining-based methodology to uncover main topics from large-scale unstructured textual data. In total, 3199 articles published between Jan 1991 and Aug 2020 were collected and analyzed. The results show that the major academic concerns of maritime transport are related to port management, container operations and liner shipping management. The overall research trends have shifted from regulations and policy management to efficient, integrated and sustainable maritime transport over the past few decades. The main research topics and emerging trends discovered from STM can facilitate researchers, funding groups and policymakers for identifying contemporary research issues and making more informed decisions.

Port state control at European Union under pandemic outbreak

IntroductionPort State Control (PSC) is a vital element of sustainable maritime transportation. Inspections of PSC regimes have been ensuring the continuity of the global supply chain as they enforce shipping to implement the maritime regulations to be safe, secure, and environmentally friendly.ObjectiveSince the beginning of the COVID-19 Pandemic, the number of onboard ship inspections has decreased inherently for protecting PSC officersand seafarers, while PSC regimes have developed a policy to focus on a high-risk ship based on historical inspection records. In this context, planning for a “new normal” in maritime transportation, it is essential to realize the change in ship inspection numbers and the trend of deficiency - detention factors for the maritime sector to provide current standards. This study aims to present the difference in ship inspection trends between 2017-2020 by focusing on COVID-19 pandemic outbreak data.MethodsComparative analysis with Paris MOU ship inspection & detention figures and entropy-based Grey Relevance Analysis has been used as a methodology to reveal the change in inspection trends after COVID-19.ResultsAfter the pandemic outbreak caused by COVID-19, the number of ship inspections under Paris MOU fell dramatically, however, inspection and detention rate remained the same, also entropy-based Grey Relevance Analysis indicates that detention remarks have also changed compared to last year deficiencies. Detention caused by nautical publication and cleanliness in the engine room has an increasing trend on detentions.ConclusionInspection statistics indicate consistent figures even during the pandemic outbreak, which indicates the current sample group for Paris MOU inspection is healthy. At the same time, entropy-based Grey Relevance Analysis presents a broader insight that the inspection trend on detention deficiencies has varied. Familiarization with the changing trends in inspections will cause fewer detentions of the ships.

The role of stakeholder participation and sustainability integration in maritime transport: A structure-conduct-performance analysis

Anchored on stakeholder management theory, this study applies the Structure-Conduct-Performance framework to analyse the effects of various stakeholders' participation on sustainability integration and organisational performance of maritime transport firms. Survey data were collected from 156 maritime transport firms. It was found that sustainability integration fully mediates the effects of stakeholders' participation on organisational performance, which highlighted the importance of developing sustainability in a business context and engaging stakeholder participation in the planning and management of sustainable maritime transport activities. The findings enrich theoretical research on stakeholder management and provide directions for maritime transport firms and transport policymakers to achieve better sustainability results.

Optimal design and energy management of hybrid storage systems for marine propulsion applications

This paper discusses the themes of optimal design and management strategies of hybrid energy storage system (HESS) for marine applications. This design and related strategy are aimed to improve battery pack durability, ensuring a smooth profile of the required current, through the complementary action of super-capacitors. A DC/DC bidirectional power converter allows for the integration of these devices and control of on-board power fluxes. The proposed methodology is based upon the solution of a constrained optimization problem. In order to overcome computational issues, proper formulation of the mathematical problem is based upon the Ritz method, which is one of the direct methods for solving problems related to calculus of variations. The solution of the optimization procedure, which is the key finding in this paper, permits to obtain battery voltage and current profile, which enables the designer to determine battery and super-capacitor sizes and also provides battery/super-capacitor reference current profiles to be tracked by the DC/DC bidirectional power converter. The procedure is evaluated with reference to the case study of a water-bus operating in the Venetian lagoon, whose operative cycle has been acquired during proper measurement campaigns. Then, the performance of energy management strategies are verified by means of laboratory experimentations on the hybrid energy storage system, which have been carried out by scaling operative cycles at single storage cell level. The obtained results show the potential advantages of proper design and energy management obtained through this new methodology, in terms of investment and maintenance costs for sustainable maritime transport.

Potential for, and drivers of, private voluntary initiatives for the\xa0decarbonisation of short sea shipping: evidence from a Swedish ferry line

The aim of this paper is to analyse shipping firms’ reactions to environmental challenges and identify how significant reductions in energy consumption and air emissions can come about by implementing a variety of voluntary initiatives. The paper focuses on the various sustainability initiatives implemented by the Swedish short sea shipping operator, Stena Line, either on a purely voluntary basis as part of their corporate social responsibility (CSR) strategy or as their chosen route for compliance with regulations. A conceptual model is developed based on stakeholder theory, the theory of planned behaviour and resource dependence theory to understand the main drivers of the firm’s adoption of sustainability initiatives and the factors affecting the integration of CSR in maritime companies. According to our findings, the company operates within a strongly enforced regulatory environmental framework and needs to exceed this framework to differentiate its service and strengthen its relationships with its customers by addressing their social and environmental concerns. As the firm’s competitive strategy focuses on service differentiation, a large pool of complementary resources is available for CSR and the implementation of sustainability practices. The results of this paper bring new insights to the potential of local private voluntary initiatives for the reduction of maritime air emissions. These include the provision of onshore power supply, the conversion of vessels to use methanol, ferry electrification, the construction of larger RoPax vessels and the implementation of an energy-saving program that focuses on crew involvement and continuous training. The environmental outcomes derived from a combination of local operational and technical energy efficiency measures are found to be significant and can contribute to the efforts for the achievement of sustainable maritime transport undertaken by international and regional organisations. The main barriers for the adoption of voluntary sustainability initiatives in the maritime sector are economic and technological. To encourage the wider adoption of these initiatives, the provision of economic incentives at national or regional level is crucial, as such initiatives usually imply high initial installation costs that should be somehow compensated for both vessels and terminals.