How blockchain technology improves sustainable supply chain processes: a practical guide

The safety and reliability of autonomous ships are critical for the successful realization of an autonomous maritime ecosystem. Research and collaboration between governments, industry, and academia are vital in achieving this goal. This paper conducts a bibliometric review of the research on the risk, safety, and reliability of autonomous ships aiming to provide researchers and maritime stakeholders with a structured overview of the topics, development trends, and collaboration networks in this research field. 417 papers published between 2011 and 2022 were identified covering 940 authors, 31 countries, and 227 journals. Three main themes were determined in this research domain: “safety engineering and risk assessment for decision making”, “navigation safety and collision avoidance”, and “cybersecurity risk analysis”. Meanwhile, it was identified that research on cybersecurity in autonomous shipping is moving to overlap with safety, which requires future co-analysis methods. Additionally, the analysis of the most cited 30 papers suggests that further research is needed in the topics of unmanned machinery operation risks, online risk tools, system-theoretic safety analysis, human factor, and the determination of suitable risk acceptance criteria for safety assessment of autonomous ships. Furthermore, the analysis revealed that the development of unambiguous COLREGs regulation is crucial for the development of safe collision avoidance algorithms for MASS. It was identified that the publication by Fan et al., (2020) is a key publication in this research field, while the journals of Ocean Engineering, Reliability Engineering & System Safety, and Safety Science are the key journals publishing on autonomous ship safety and reliability. 

Research on risk, safety, and reliability of autonomous ships: A bibliometric review

Smart ports can be regarded as the solution that addresses the new challenges faced by international trade and logistics systems. By deeply integrating digital technologies, such as the Internet of Things, big data, cloud computing, and artificial intelligence, smart ports can greatly increase their capacity for intelligent operation and optimal allocation of resources in port operation, which will enable continuous improvement in the competitiveness of ports as they meet the various challenges ahead. In this paper a systematic bibliometric review of smart ports is conducted by analyzing the existing publications related to smart ports. The development status of studies on smart ports is discussed, and both existing problems and key research gaps in this field are identified. In addition, performance indicators and future development trends are discussed. The purpose of this work is to lay a solid academic foundation in the field of smart ports, and to propose open research directions that will stimulate interest in this area. Furthermore, through an in-depth analysis of the existing studies on smart ports, the problems existing in current smart port studies are revealed, and targeted suggestions are put forward, which will have a positive impact on smart port studies in the future. 

Smart port: A bibliometric review and future research directions

As a fundamental transportation mode, maritime logistics has become an indispensable component on a global scale. However, there are multiple drawbacks associated with ports operating in traditional ways, such as higher cost, lower efficiency and generating more environmental pollution. Digital technologies have been researched and implemented gradually in green ports, especially in data collection and real-time monitoring, and these advances help to promote higher work efficiency and reduce detrimental environmental impacts. It was found that green ports (e.g. ports of Raffina, Los Angeles, and Long Beach) generally perform better in energy conservation and pollutant emission reduction. However, considering the variability in the level of digitalization, there are challenges in achieving effective communications between individual ports. Therefore, to optimize and update green port practices, a systematic review is necessary to comprehensively analyze the beneficial contributions of green ports. This review adopted bibliometric analysis to examine the shipping framework focusing on green ports digitalization and innovation. After that, with regards to the bibliometric results, five aspects were analyzed, including environment, performance, policy, technology, and management. Besides, intelligent life-cycle management was systematically discussed to improve green ports and maritime logistics performance and sustainability in three aspects, namely waste discharge, shipping management system and green ports management. The findings revealed that green ports and maritime logistics require digital cooperation, transformation, and management to achieve sustainable development goals, including route selection and control of ships' numbers, weather prediction, and navigational effluent monitoring, albeit with some obstacles. 

Digitalization and innovation in green ports: A review of current issues, contributions and the way forward in promoting sustainable ports and maritime logistics.

Human-autonomy collaboration plays a pivotal role in the development of Maritime autonomous surface ships (MASS), as Shore control center (SCC) operators may engage in the control loop by directly operating the MASS, or, in the supervisory loop, monitoring the MASS and taking over control when needed. Thus, efficient human performance during takeover control and operation is crucial for the safety of MASS operations. However, since the MASS is still in the early phase of development, the mechanism of human errors is unknown, and the data on human-autonomy collaborative operation is scarce. Human reliability analysis (HRA) aims to assess human errors qualitatively and quantitatively, and is widely used in various complex systems to help safety analysis. This study is dedicated to incorporating advanced HRA methods elements to identify and quantify human errors during taking over control and operation of a MASS in collision avoidance scenarios. It presents virtual experimental results, combined with theoretical human error identification and assessment methods. At first, we apply the Human-System Interaction in Autonomy (H-SIA) method to identify potential human errors; secondly, we identify relevant Performance Shaping Factors (PSFs) including Experience, Boredom, Task complexity, Available time and Pre-warning, and performance measures of the human errors, and implement them in the virtual experiment based on a full-scale autonomous ferry research vessel called milliAmpere2. Finally, we build a Bayesian Network (BN) to present causal and probabilistic relationships between PSFs and human errors through experimental data. The results show that available time has the highest impact on takeover performance of operators, followed by task complexity and pre-warning. Boredom does not present a significant sole impact unless combined with available time. Experience does not show a significant impact on human performance. In addition to the relevance of the human errors analysis to the safe development and operational design of MASS, the developed method benefits other human-autonomy collaborative systems. The developed BN model shows adaptability to assess human error probabilities, and the practical significance of integrating experimental data into the existing HRA methodologies for complex systems. 

Analysis of human errors in Human-autonomy collaboration in autonomous ships operations through shore control experimental data

Ships and ports are ripe for operation without humans — but only if the maritime industry can work through the practical, legal and economic implications first. Ships and ports are ripe for operation without humans — but only if the maritime industry can work through the practical, legal and economic implications first. 

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-00557-5.pdf

Autonomous ships are on the horizon: here’s what we need to know

ABSTRACT Increasing congestion and the push for (i) a greener modal shift, (ii) more reliability and visibility of goods, and (iii) more sustainable activities in and related to the port are turning policymakers to the concept of the smart port. Such emerging concept describes a future state of the port that is adapted to these challenges. A smart port is a port that optimizes in-, intra- and outbound flow of goods and information, leads sustainable development and guarantees safe, resilient and secure activities through the capabilities of its (extended) port community and enabling technologies. However, turning a traditional port into a smart port is a strategic challenge for the port community at large. To contribute to this practically relevant and academic challenge, the present paper applies a literature review and the novel maturity model development methodology to develop a strategic tool. This newly-developed strategic tool (i) enhances the common understanding of the current and aspired maturity state, (ii) support decision-making of port policy and management actors and (iii) represent a maturation path for improvement for port communities. The case study results demonstrate the benefits and relevance of the tool. Finally, recommendations are made to apply this policy tool for digitalization strategy.

Developing and demonstrating a maturity model for smart ports

Abstract Maritime supply chain (MarSC) stakeholders interact with third parties (e.g. freight forwarders, 3PLs, financial institutes, custom authorities) to facilitate the cargo flow and exchange of information, documents, or financials. Hence, MarSC stakeholders are increasingly interested in innovative technological solutions that vouch for the authenticity and/or the ownership of digital assets without the control of a central third party. Extended research is carried out to prove how applications based on the distributed ledger technology or blockchain address these requirements, yet limited research investigates their purchasing process and economic implications. This paper uses the phytosanitary certificate in an international supply chain flow as a case study where interaction between multiple stakeholders is fundamental and analyses the purchase scenarios of a blockchain-based tool. To do so, it uses a theoretical model that identifies and quantifies the costs and benefits incurred by MarSC stakeholders, formulates gain-sharing scenarios and presents the results of a sensitivity analysis to show the dependence between the data-use and the potential economic gains it generates. The results show that freight forwarders could share economic benefits with shippers or consignees to anticipate purchasing a blockchain-based tool. 

https://etrr.springeropen.com/counter/pdf/10.1186/s12544-022-00545-2

Cost-effectiveness and gain-sharing scenarios for purchasing a blockchain-based application in the maritime supply chain

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tranpol.2022.09.014

Transport policy, special issue editorial “Impacts of COVID-19 and other pandemics on the freight transport, logistics and supply chains, and policy responses”

The modal share of rail freight transport has shown little movement during the past years, despite the policy efforts made. This raises the question if intermodality should be really considered a strength for rail freight transport development. In order to make a strong case for future development decisions on rail freight transport, this paper is studying its direct and indirect economic impact on the Belgian national economy. It adapts the existing input–output methodology by distilling the rail freight sector from the existing general combined ‘public and freight land transport sector’ within the national calculations of the Belgian input–output table, performed by the Federal Planning Office every five years. The methodology is developed by adopting a set of assumptions, necessary to overcome data limitations, and with the collection of relevant customer and supplier data from the largest Belgian rail freight operator, holding a market share of over 85%. The outcome of the research is an adapted input–output table with a detailed 'rail freight transport' sector, highlighting the different economic relationships with the original sectors of the national input–output table. It is no surprise that strong links with other transportation sectors exist. In addition, a Leontief multiplier is calculated, approximating the total economic effect in terms of monetary units, when the output demand in the investigated rail freight sector is increased by one of this monetary unit. The study reveals a potentially high total effect on the national economy. 

The indirect economic impact of rail freight transport: an input-output case study for Belgium

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