The market and economics of mobile port-based Ballast Water Treatment solutions

While vessels need to carry ballast water for safe and efficient operations, this poses serious environmental and economic problems due to the multitude of marine invasive species carried in it. The Ballast Water Management Convention (BWMC) which came into force in September 2017 requires that vessels manage their ballast water according to specific standards. For most vessels compliance will require fitting a ballast water treatment (BWT) system. However, in some cases, a mobile solution e.g. a BWT system fitted in a container as an alternative to an onboard system might be a more viable solution. These mobile treatment systems are also particularly suitable for barges, supply vessels, vessels engaged in short sea shipping or those with minimal and predictable ballasting operations. These mobile systems are an excellent solution as a contingency measure, in line with the latest discussions at the IMO. To that extent, this paper presents the findings of a detailed market analysis and economic feasibility study that analyses the costs and benefits of the proposed system under various scenarios

Maritime Cargo Prioritisation during a Prolonged Pandemic Lockdown Using an Integrated TOPSIS-Knapsack Technique: A Case Study on Small Island Developing States—The Rodrigues Island

Many remote areas, such as island states, are highly dependent on the transportation of cargo, and any disruptions similar to the 2020 pandemic lockdowns can negatively affect their respective supply chains. These disruptions could lead to a severe humanitarian crisis. It is therefore imperative to develop a cargo prioritisation process to ensure that essential commodities are transported. We propose a decision-aid tool that integrates two methods: (a) the Technique for Order of Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) and (b) the knapsack problem. Containers are prioritised based on attributes such as their importance and their economic value. TOPSIS is used to calculate a score for each container and the knapsack problem determines the containers to be imported respecting the transportation capacity constraints. The practical applicability of the model is demonstrated by a case study on a Small Island Developing State. The proposed decision-aid tool could also be extended to be used in disaster relief situations

Integration of air quality and climate change policies in shipping: The case of sulphur emissions regulation

Ship air pollution has attracted much attention from the shipping community. Besides Greenhouse Gases (such as carbon dioxide) that contribute to Climate Change, shipping emits many other gases including sulphur and nitrous oxides. There is much scientific evidence that measures to reduce these pollutants do improve air quality but, at the same time, contribute to the acceleration of global warming, because they result in removing the cooling effect of these gases. Until now climate change and air quality regulations have been discussed independently. This work tries to assess the effect of policies to improve air quality on climate change, and vice versa. This paper discusses an approach to assess the impact of SOx reduction measures on global warming by presenting a way to place both emissions on a common scale to allow a comparison between them and to estimate their aggregate effect. Such integration can lead to better decisions by policymakers

Decarbonization of Maritime Transport: Is There Light at the End of the Tunnel?

The purpose of this paper is to assess the status and prospects of the decarbonization of maritime transport. Already more than two years have passed since the landmark decision of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in April 2018, which entailed ambitious targets to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from ships. The paper attempts to address the following three questions: (a) where do we stand with respect to GHG emissions from ships, (b) how is the Initial IMO Strategy progressing, and (c) what should be done to move ahead? To that effect, our methodology includes commenting on some of the key issues addressed by the recently released 4th IMO GHG study, assessing progress at the IMO since 2018, and finally identifying other issues that we consider relevant and important as regards maritime GHG emissions, such as for instance the role of the European Green Deal and how this may interact with the IMO process. Even though the approach of the paper is to a significant extent qualitative, some key quantitative and modelling aspects are considered as well. On the basis of our analysis, our main conjecture is that there is not yet light at the end of the tunnel with respect to decarbonizing maritime transport

Influence and transparency at the IMO: the name of the game

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) is a specialized United Nations agency responsible for regulating maritime transport. The purpose of this paper is to shed some light into the following issues: what are the main parameters of influence at the IMO? Who among Member States, industry or other players, are the main influencers? And is the process transparent enough? To address this issue, a perspective mainly but not exclusively based on the authors’ own experience from the activities of IMO’s Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC) and specifically its recent focus on how to decarbonize shipping is taken. To that effect, the paper examines several issues that may be relevant, including delegation size, delegation composition, number of submissions and other factors that may affect representation and influence in IMO decision making. The paper also addresses the issue that was recently put forward by several Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), that the shipping industry deliberately promotes strategies and tactics that slow down the drive for decarbonization and that transparency at the IMO leaves a lot to be desired. A conjecture of the paper is that better transparency and stricter representation rules at the IMO could surely lead to some improvements. In particular it is found that the current rules (or lack thereof) may unduly favor some stakeholders. However, even though the drive to decarbonize shipping goes at a slow pace, the paper finds no evidence of a coordinated attempt to slow down the process. A related conjecture concerns the fragmentation of influence at the IMO, which can perhaps explain why things are not moving very fast

Managing Ship’s Ballast Water: A Feasibility Assessment of Mobile Port-Based Treatment

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has adopted the Ballast Water Management Convention (BWMC), which requires vessels to manage their ballast water according to specific standards. While most vessels have to install a management system onboard, in some cases, a mobile solution, for example a system fitted in a container, might be a more viable solution. These mobile systems are an excellent solution as a contingency measure as well, that is when onboard systems malfunction. Research on the topic is rather scant. To that extent, this paper proposes a Bayesian network-based framework to model and assess the feasibility of mobile ballast water treatment solutions. The results based on input from experts indicate that mobile systems are a highly feasible solution. The operational and logistical feasibility of the system are the most important parameters and are areas where the manufacturers and service providers should pay more attention. With compliance deadlines approaching, malfunctions of installed systems increasing and the technology for port-based solutions becoming more mature, there will be increased focus on port-based systems. Our results can, therefore, provide valuable insights to regulators, ship and port operations and we hope that they can spark further academic research on this area

A decision-making framework to reduce the risk of collisions between ships and whales

Ship strikes are one of the main human-induced threats to whale survival. A variety of measures have been used or proposed to reduce collisions and subsequent mortality of whales. These include operational measures, such as mandatory speed reduction, or technical ones, such as detection tools. There is, however, a lack of a systematic approach to assessing the various measures that can mitigate the risk of ship collisions with whales. In this paper, a holistic approach is proposed to evaluate mitigation measures based on a risk assessment framework that has been adopted by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), namely the Formal Safety Assessment (FSA). Formal Safety Assessment (FSA) is “a rational and systematic process for assessing the risk related to maritime safety and the protection of the marine environment and for evaluating the costs and benefits of IMO's options for reducing these risks”. The paper conceptualizes the use of a systematic risk assessment methodology, namely the FSA, to assess measures to reduce the risk of collisions between ships and whales

The Liner Shipping Routing and Scheduling Problem Under Environmental Considerations: The Case of Emission Control Areas

This paper deals with the Liner Shipping Routing and Scheduling Problem (LSRSP), which consists of designing the time schedule for a vessel to visit a fixed set of ports while minimizing costs. We extend the classical problem to include the external cost of ship air emissions and we present some results of our work investigating the impact of Emission Control Areas in the routing and scheduling of liner vessels

Reducing whale-ship collisions by better estimating damages to ships

Collisions between ships and whales raise environmental, safety, and economic concerns. The management of whale-ship collisions, however, lacks a holistic approach, unlike the management of other types of wildlife-vehicle collisions, which have been more standardized for several years now. In particular, safety and economic factors are routinely omitted in the assessment of proposed mitigation solutions to ship strikes, possibly leading to under-compliance and a lack of acceptance from the stakeholders. In this study, we estimate the probability of ship damage due to a whale-ship collision. While the probability of damage is low, the costs could be important, suggesting that property damages are significant enough to be taken into consideration when assessing solutions. Lessons learned from other types of wildlife-vehicle collisions suggest that the whale-ship collision should be managed as wildlife-aircraft collisions. For several years, the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) manages collisions between aircrafts and wildlife at the international level. We advocate that its United Nations counterpart, namely the International Maritime Organization (IMO), get more involved in the whale-ship collision management. Further research is needed to more precisely quantify the costs incurred to ships from damages caused by whale-ship collisions

The multi-port berth allocation problem with speed optimization and emission considerations

The container shipping industry faces many interrelated challenges and opportunities, as its role in the global trading system has become increasingly important over the last decades. On the one side, collaboration between port terminals and shipping liners can lead to costs savings and help achieve a sustainable supply chain, and on the other side, the optimization of operations and sailing times leads to reductions in bunker consumption and, thus, to fuel cost and air emissions reductions. To that effect, there is an increasing need to address the integration opportunities and environmental issues related to container shipping through optimization. This paper focuses on the well known Berth Allocation Problem (BAP), an optimization problem assigning berthing times and positions to vessels in container terminals. We introduce a novel mathematical formulation that extends the classical BAP to cover multiple ports in a shipping network under the assumption of strong cooperation between shipping lines and terminals. Speed is optimized on all sailing legs between ports, demonstrating the effect of speed optimization in reducing the total time of the operation, as well as total fuel consumption and emissions. Furthermore, the model implementation shows that an accurate speed discretization can result in far better economic and environmental results