The paper focuses on assessing the level of digitalization in several developing maritime business environments in Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia. The assessment has been done in reference to Holtham’s and Courtney’s Intelligent Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) Exploiter Model. The dimensions as maritime business system effectiveness, roles, and skills of information technology personnel, ladders of knowledge, ICT strategy, organizational culture, and manager’s mindset are analyzed. In addition, benchmarking with findings from developed maritime business environments in Croatia, Greece, Italy, and Slovenia, which belong to the European Union (EU), by using the same model, has been conducted. This is done with the aim to outline directions for improving the quality and speed of digitalization in non-EU countries, which have been functioning for decades in transitional conditions. The maritime ecosystem naturally has a tendency to be unique and to function smoothly as such. Alleviating the differences in the level and effectiveness of digitalization in developed and developing European countries is a path towards achieving this goal. By sharing their own expertise in the rational and intelligent use of ICT, developed EU countries can support developing non-EU countries towards ensuring sustainability in the entire European and worldwide maritime business ecosystem.

No abstract

Coordination Of Maritime assets for Persistent And Systematic Surveillance (COMPASS2020) is an EU H2020 project, which has as an overarching goal deployment of Unmanned Vehicles (UxV) - aerial, sea surface and underwater ones, in addition to manned offshore patrol vessels, to enhance current maritime border surveillance operations regarding detection of irregular migrants and narcotics smugglers. This paper gives an overview of several research projects on autonomous marine vehicles, as a key technological, organizational and legislative issue within the project scope: Kaisa, an autonomous vessel prototype built at SAMK Faculty of Logistics and Maritime Technology in Rauma (Finland). Autonomous Ships 101 from Solent University in Southampton (England). A review of other articles has served as a comparative analysis to the surveillance assets proposed by COMPASS2020.

This paper outlines an extensive analysis of the case of Montenegro’s maritime surveillance system becoming integrated within the European Common Information Sharing Environment (CISE). Threats to secure maritime borders across Europe are ever-present and regularly demand coordinated efforts between the member states to tackle and prevent them, e.g. illegal immigration across the Mediterranean. Administration for Maritime Safety and Port Management (AMSPM) in Montenegro is a member of the ANDROMEDA EU project that seeks to facilitate deployments and demonstrations of CISE trials across the European regions, towards their endorsement readiness. AMSPM is now at the forefront of assessing and deploying the CISE components in Montenegro. It thus appropriately evaluates the operational aspects, observes the CISE implementations in some European states, formulates the impact for other national stakeholders, as well as the very prospect of the resulting augmented maritime surveillance in the country. This substantiates the content of this paper as the feasibility of the CISE deployment in Montenegro, supported by a snapshot of the cost-benefit analysis. We aspire to offer novel perspectives and insights that could be a universally useful experience to different CISE implementation initiatives, especially for countries or regions of similar smaller sizes and coastal area.

In this paper, the costs and benefits of the National Maritime Single Window (NMSW) for coastal countries that have limited human resources and infrastructure related to maritime traffic are researched. A general method for conducting a cost-benefit analysis of NMSW implementation is proposed. Using this method and the input data for Montenegro, as an example of a small-sized coastal country, the authors assess whether such an investment in NMSW implementation can be beneficial to coastal countries with limited resources.

No abstract

This paper deals with challenges of implementing blockchain (BC) technology in maritime at developing countries, with a research focus on Montenegro and South Africa. Research design and categories analyzed in the paper are chosen due to the search of relevant secondary literature resources. Selected experts in Information Technology (IT) and maritime from aforementioned developing countries were asked about their perception of BC as disruptive technology, its implementation, and implications on maritime and other industries, through a questionnaire, which contains both quantitative and qualitative parts. The results should give the readers insights into the experts’ standpoints concerning rational blockchain adoption in maritime and other industries in developing and transitional economies. The paper is organized into six sections: (1) introduction, (2) literature review on blockchain in maritime, (3) research problem and design, (4) results, (5) discussion, and (6) conclusions.

Ensuring a high level of vessel traffic surveillance and maritime safety is determined by exploiting innovative ICT technologies and international cooperation among maritime authorities. Therefore, initiatives for maritime surveillance, global and regional integrations are realised through a collaborative, cost-effective and interoperable Common Information Sharing Environment (CISE). Consisting of the institutional network of maritime authorities that cooperate on various domains like safety, border control, environmental and rescue missions at sea, CISE enables the efficient transfer and economic exchange of maritime data and information via different interoperable systems using modern digital technologies. The ever-increasing amount of data received from heterogeneous data sources requires specific processing through the adoption of a Big Data framework which hosts, manages and distributes data to maritime users, contributing with great overall benefits to the CISE network core functionality. Specifically, this paper analyses the advantages of the Data Lake infrastructure, including its processes, techniques, tools and applications used to enhance maritime surveillance and safety across the CISE network. This part contains the deployment and interoperability achieved through the components of the participating command and control (C2) systems.Last, as a case study, an overview of the EU project EFFECTOR is provided which aims to demonstrate an end-to-end interoperability framework of data-driven solutions for maritime situational awareness at strategic and tactical operations.