Due to the growing concerns of emissions from the shipping industry, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has set strategies to reduce the CO2 intensity by 40% in 2030 and cut total GHGs ...emissions by at least 50% by 2050, with 2008 as a baseline. Clean alternative marine fuels are widely recognized and used as a viable solution for reducing ship-related air pollution. Several studies including traditional reviews have been conducted to examine the literature on cleaner alternative marine fuels and their role in decarbonizing the shipping sector. However, these studies fail to unpack the main research actors, evolutionary nuances, and emerging research hotspots in this field.
To quantitatively and qualitatively explore this research field, the current study adopts a bibliometric analysis. 583 eligible documents published from 2000 to 2020 were retrieved and merged from the Web of Science Core Collection and Scopus databases, and analyzed with the R-studio bibliometrix package (Biblioshiny).
Results revealed that the field is growing significantly at a growth rate of 15.8%, with key contributions to the field originating from the USA. Liquified Natural Gas has been identified as the most researched alternative shipping fuel. However, recent trends show researchers turning their attention towards methanol, ammonia, and hydrogen fuels. By analyzing the frequently used keywords and relevant articles, it became clear that the research community has focused mainly on the potential of different alternative fuels as a replacement to conventional marine fuels to limit the emissions from the shipping sector from an environmental, technical, and economic perspective.
The current study offers a basis for future research into the decarbonization of the shipping industry.
Display omitted
•Bibliometric study on clean marine fuels based on Web of Science and Scopus databases.•A growing research field with an annual growth rate of 15.8%.•Key authors, institutions and countries in the field have been identified.•LNG emerged as the most researched alternative shipping fuel.•Research hotspots and trends on clean marine fuels discussed.
Display omitted
•Marine emission possesses both environmental and human health risks.•Alternative fuels including hydrogen can reduce harmful emissions from marine transport.•Alternative fuels have ...the potential to promote UN Sustainable Development Goals.•The potential challenges of alternative fuel in marine transport are highlighted.
The International Maritime Organization (IMO) has placed stricter controls on several aspects of global maritime transport operations to protect the environment. In light of this, the goal of this study is to examine and assess the different prospective paths and technologies that will assist the shipping industry in decarbonizing its operations. We consider how the utilisation of various alternative energy sources reduces greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from marine transportation and contributes to the promotion of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SGDs). The complexities associated with maritime industry operations using alternative energy sources are also explored. Biofuel as an alternative energy source, including biomethanol and biodiesel, can reduce greenhouse gas emissions in the shipping industry by 25% to 100%. However, the current supply of biofuels can only meet about 15% of the total demand which is not sufficient to sustainably power the entire marine fleet. There are several issues associated with these biofuels, including oxidation, ecological consequences, feedstock availability, technical and operational constraints, and economic factors that must be addressed before their full potential may be achieved.
Ship weather routing has seen considerably increasing attention in recent years in both academia and industry. Problems in this area consider finding the optimal path and sailing speed for a given ...voyage considering the environmental conditions of wind and waves. The objectives typically consider minimizing operating costs, fuel consumption, or risk of passage. This paper presents a survey of weather routing and voyage optimization research in maritime transportation, explaining the main methodological approaches, and the key disciplines that are dealing with this problem. The main methodologies used to solve the weather routing problem include the isochrone method, dynamic programming, calculus of variations, the use of pathfinding algorithms and heuristics, while in recent years artificial intelligence and machine learning applications have also risen. Most of these methodologies are well established, and have not changed significantly throughout the years, although applications with a combination of these methods have been used. A taxonomy is subsequently presented based on the discipline, application area, methodological approach, and other important parameters. Considering the steep increase in the number of research papers published in recent years, this paper also seeks to propose future research topics in the field. The paper highlights the need to standardize the reporting of savings through weather routing, to facilitate comparisons between methodologies, which could be achieved through the creation of benchmarking instances.
•A critical literature review on weather routing and voyage optimization problems is conducted.•We present the main methodologies for weather routing.•We present a taxonomy of research based on relevant academic papers.•We discuss potential topics for future research in the field.•We propose the necessity of benchmarking the efficacy of weather routing algorithms in future research.
For the first time, a comparative economic study between liquid hydrogen and methanol as hydrogen vectors for the bulk transport of hydrogen at sea has been performed. The objective of this study is ...to gain insight on whether it is cost-effective to produce green hydrogen locally or, instead, import it from another location overseas featuring lower costs of renewable energy. In addition, this study aims to determine the break-even point at which the hydrogen transport alternatives, covered in this study, become more inexpensive. The alternatives covered include the seaborne transport of liquid hydrogen or methanol with the reconversion to hydrogen at the destination through methanol electrolysis or a steam-reforming process. Three different production mass flow rates of hydrogen at the origin are explored, 100 kt/y, 1 Mt/y, and 10 Mt/y, in regard to three representative routes: Brazil–Spain, Brazil–The Netherlands, and Australia–Japan. The findings of this study suggest that for the production of hydrogen at 1 Mt/y with an electricity cost of 40 USD/MWh, liquid hydrogen is the cheapest alternative with a levelized cost of hydrogen at the destination of approximately 2 USD/kg for all of the explored routes. If the synthesized e-methanol reaching the import destination is directly used as an energy vector, the levelized cost of energy contained in this e-methanol practically coincides with that of liquid hydrogen at a mass flow rate of 10 Mt/y at the origin.
In the last years, the national economies have been subject to sporadic lockdowns, introduction of recurrent regulations for mobility control, supply chain disruptions, liquidation of the economic ...activity of many sectors. These circumstances have also affected the normal functioning of the transport sector and especially the maritime transport. Dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic and the military conflict in Ukraine, the maritime operators should also meet the requirements of the European green deal, the European emissions trading scheme, digitalizing and maintaining the seafarers’ employment in the sector. In the case of Bulgaria, these challenges are very difficult to overcome because of the institutional environment conditions, therefore, their evaluation is of great importance for the development of the subsector.
Shipping contributes roughly 2.8 % of global anthropogenic greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and this is projected to increase in the decades to come. The main regulator of the shipping industry, the ...International Maritime Organization (IMO), bears the responsibility for developing climate change regulation. Yet the IMO decarbonisation target remains only a 50 % reduction by 2050, and, while regulatory measures have been adopted, these mostly focus on increasing the energy efficiency of ships, not the reduction of total sector GHG emissions. The result is that carbon emissions from shipping continue to rise and are projected to increase by anything up to 50 % by 2050. While many studies are undertaken on the impact of efficiency regulations or the potential for market-based mechanisms, we argue in this piece that missing from this discussion is the potential for a target of full decarbonisation, in line with the IPCC recommendation, allied with a complete ban on the use of fossil fuels in shipping by 2050. This policy would provide certainty to the market and allow industry actors to undertake the transition in a level playing field. Without such a clear signal, carriers and shipowners will transition much more slowly to alternative fuels alongside continued long-term use of fossil fuels. We argue that this position should be actively considered and evaluated, with a tapered timeline to phase out the use of fossil fuels by this date. Instead of focusing research only on the marginal gains of partial policies, scholars and policymakers should prepare plans and evaluate scenarios linked to a clear goal of real zero by 2050.
•Literature review of drivers, success factors & barriers for Digital Transformation•New technologies foster Digital Transformation in the Maritime Transport Sector•Lack of awareness of how Digital ...Transformation positively affects the Maritime Transport operations•Stakeholder collaboration - the most important challenge for Digital Transformation•Digital Transformation in the Maritime Transport Sector should not only be technology oriented
In this paper, the authors perform a literature review of the drivers, success factors and barriers to digital transformation in the maritime transport sector. Previous research offering a comprehensive overview of digital transformation in the maritime transport sector is scarce. In order to fill this research gap, the authors have identified a total of 139 sources, mainly related to the drivers, success factors and barriers for digitalization and digital transformation. The analysis of the state of the art was performed, along with the analysis of the impact of digital transformation in the maritime transport sector using a number of cases. The development of innovative technologies (such as Blockchain or autonomous shipping) definitely fosters digital transformation in the maritime transport sector. The barriers which are slowing down digital transformation compared to other industries are highlighted, such as the lack of awareness of how digital transformation may affect the business, and the lack of standards and cooperation among stakeholders. The research findings fill the identified research gap, and can serve practitioners in shaping up proper strategies for successful digital transformation of organizations in the maritime transport sector.
•Holistic use of fNIRS and maritime simulation to conduct HPM objectively.•Development of a hybrid assessment model using haemoglobin data and ANN.•Pioneering psychophysiological data-driven machine ...learning for seafarers’ HPM.•Real case analysis for classifying seafarers of different qualifications.
Human errors significantly contribute to transport accidents. Human performance measurement (HPM) is crucial to ensure human reliability and reduce human errors. However, how to address and reduce the subjective bias introduced by assessors in HPM and seafarer certification remains a key research challenge. This paper aims to develop a new psychophysiological data-driven machine learning method to realize the effective HPM in the maritime sector. It conducts experiments using a functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy (fNIRS) technology and compares the performance of two groups in a maritime case (i.e. experienced and inexperienced seafarers in terms of different qualifications by certificates), via an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model. The results have generated insightful implications and new contributions, including (1) the introduction of an objective criterion for assessors to monitor, assess, and support seafarer training and certification for maritime authorities; (2) the quantification of human response under specific missions, which serves as an index for a shipping company to evaluate seafarer reliability; (3) a supportive tool to evaluate human performance in complex emerging systems (e.g. Maritime Autonomous Surface Ship (MASS)) design for ship manufactures and shipbuilders.
Maritime traffic network is essential for navigation efficiency and safety of the maritime transport system. This study proposes a framework for extracting maritime traffic network based on Automatic ...Identification System (AIS) data. The framework consists of maritime traffic pattern recognition, semantic routes extraction, route decomposition, and network generation. Firstly, a data-driven method is introduced to recognize ship behavior patterns and extends the single ship behaviors to regional characteristics to determine the departure-arrival areas. Then, based on the different combination of departure-arrival areas, the ship trajectories are classified to traffic groups. Subsequently, the grid-system is used to rasterize each traffic group, which realizes the fusion of trajectory data and geographic location information. Finally, to obtain the main routes and navigation channels, the extraction method is introduced by establishing the cumulative grid importance function. The main routes, together with the navigation channels, compose the maritime traffic network. The method is applied to AIS data in the Beibu Gulf, and the results show that the traffic network contains 12 stop areas, 4 entry/exit locations, 13 main routes as well as their corresponding navigation channels. It is therefore concluded that the proposed method helps (1) provide a theoretical framework to obtain and analyze the maritime traffic network and (2) enrich navigation channel identification methods for maritime transport management.
•A tangible analytical approach to extract maritime traffic network.•The approach consists of maritime traffic pattern recognition and, maritime network generation.•Machine learning method and grid system method are proposed to group traffic patterns.•The proposed approach is demonstrated using real-world AIS data.•The proposed approach has the potential to support intelligent maritime transport management.
PDF
