The Initial Strategy on reduction of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions from ships adopted by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in 2018 commits the IMO to reduce total GHG emissions of shipping by at least 50% by 2050. Though the direction of the Strategy is clear, the path to implementation remains uncertain. The ambitious IMO’s target calls for widespread uptake of lower and zero-carbon fuels, in addition to other energy efficiency measures, including operational and market ones. Using a triangulated research approach, this paper provides a critical overview of the main measures and initiatives the shipping industry can adopt to try to cope with the new IMO’s requirements. The pros and cons of the most popular emission reduction options are investigated along with the main challenges and barriers to implementation and the potential facilitators that could foster a wider application. The framework that is outlined is complex and not without controversy. Research can play a key role as a facilitator of shipping’s decarbonization by providing its contribution to overcoming the existing controversies on various decarbonization options and by developing a wealth of knowledge that can encourage the implementation of low-carbon initiatives.

Increasing competition in the container shipping sector has meant that\ud terminals are having to equip themselves with increasingly accurate analytical and\ud governance tools. A transhipment terminal is an extremely complex system in terms of both\ud organisation and management. Added to the uncertainty surrounding ships’ arrival time in\ud port and the costs resulting from over-underestimation of resources is the large number of\ud constraints and variables involved in port activities. Predicting ships delays in advance\ud means that the relative demand for each shift can be determined with greater accuracy, and\ud the basic resources then allocated to satisfy that demand. To this end, in this article we\ud propose two algorithms: a dynamic learning predictive algorithm based on neural networks\ud and an optimisation algorithm for resource allocation. The use of these two algorithms\ud permits on the one hand to reduce the uncertainty interval surrounding ships’ arrival in\ud port, ensuring that human resources can be planned around just two shifts. On the other\ud hand, operators can be optimally allocated for the entire workday, taking into account\ud actual demand and operations of the terminal. Moreover, as these algorithms are based on\ud general variables they can be applied to any transhipment terminal. Future integration of\ud the two models within a broader decision support system will provide an important support\ud tool for planners for fast, flexible planning of the terminal’s operations management

No abstract

No abstract

The great potential of the Mediterranean area, as yet not fully tapped due to the lack of the integrated management of its ports, calls for innovative management policies for achieving competitiveness within the Mediterranean port system. To this end, the current regime of intra-port competition has proven highly unproductive and needs to be rethought, implementing new cooperation policies. The aim of this study is to identify, by means of traditional clustering techniques, homogeneous groups of ports within the Mediterranean region. In so doing, it would be possible to propose new cooperation policies between ports of the same cluster, but also between different clusters, on the basis of their specific features. A data set has been created for 34 major Mediterranean container ports. Relations between ports have been evaluated from a quantitative perspective through traditional statistical techniques: hierarchical cluster analysis based on the Ward method. Different sets of homogeneous ports have been obtained alternating different combinations of input variables and varying these over suitable ranges, in line with the assumed cooperation policies. The findings provide the basis for exploring the strategic functional relationships among ports, in order to promote collective integrated actions that could prove essential for the competitiveness of the Mediterranean port system.