In a new book, senior researcher Jessica Larsen analyses how relevant anti-piracy legislation was enforced when international ship contributions and regional coastal states cooperated on anti-piracy off the coast of Somalia in 2008-2016.
The book is a socio-legal study based on both clause analyses and ethnographic fieldwork. The book takes the reader on board a warship patrolling the Indian Ocean and into the courtrooms of the island nation of Seychelles, which conducted 17 piracy cases. Through interviews and observations, the book uncovers how anti-piracy legislation works in practice. Existing studies have primarily examined existing law. This book goes out into the field to also uncover applied law.
The analysis shows examples of ambiguity about which legal sources should be applied at sea. It identifies practices in court that show cases of impunity and questions legal certainty. The implications of this should be considered as counter-piracy off Somalia has been used as a model for counter-piracy elsewhere, such as in the Gulf of Guinea.
In tramp shipping, a preliminary route is required for voyage planning at the pre-fixture stage (before a chartering contract is agreed). Such routes are conventionally designated by using pilot charts or software considering long-term statistical weather. However, it has been experienced by tramp operators that such route solutions often poorly estimated sailing distances for long journeys and thereby cause inappropriate cost estimation and bad voyage plan. To fill this gap, a data-driven methodology is proposed in this paper to establish a practical route library with the consideration of ship sizes, load conditions and seasonality. In this method, it first requires a dividing of ship trajectories into local sea passage and open sea passage. The voyage trajectories made of AIS points are then simplified to pattern nodes based on a speed-weighted geolocation method. Afterwards, the KMeans algorithm is deployed to properly classify these pattern nodes, identifying the most representative nodes (routes) in open sea passages. Simultaneously, the connection points are identified by DBSCAN algorithm, representing local sea passages. Combining the representative routes in open sea passages and the connection points in local sea passages, the most navigated routes between two ports are obtained. Finally, case studies are conducted for the Pacific Ocean and the Atlantic Ocean respectively using global AIS data from tanker vessels to demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of this methodology. The proposed route library is capable of providing reliable route references to support the decision-making at the pre-fixture stage.
The report summarizes a major interview survey among freight forwarders, shipping companies and agents, as well as North Jutland customers of containerized sea transport.
Having the right spare part at the right time to the right place for ship maintenance to the minimal possible costs is an exigent management problem that maritime shipping companies face. This is especially challenging in bulk shipping where routes are not fixed, but subsequent port calls depend on spot market dynamics. Thus, spare parts allocation ahead in time is limited, but possible if failures rates of ship components and their timing can be foreseen, so that spare parts can be allocated to hedge against the risk of long waiting times and thus ship downtimes. Thus, monitoring the condition of components key to the ships performance is essential to the task. This can enable companies to significantly reduce operational costs of their fleet leading to a competitive advantage in a highly volatile market regarding demand and demand-driven freight rates.
However, shipping companies seem far away from applying such methods due to various challenges ranging from data gathering and cultivating an understanding of data quality needs, adaptation to move from preventive towards predictive and condition-based monitoring, and the introduction and application of decision support tools for sourcing, spare parts allocation, and inventory management.
In this paper, we investigate the current state of the art of maintenance and related spare parts logistics management for maritime shipping and discuss the application of methods to the bulk carriage market. We add practical knowledge from case companies and discuss how challenges can be overcome in providing guidelines for companies.
Melting Arctic sea ice, shore ice, and permafrost are changing costs and benefits to transport routes between Atlantic and Pacific oceans, and more generally, for maritime economic activity in the Arctic. We investigate the potential for development of Arctic ports from a logistics (demand) and an infrastructural (supply) point of view that directly incorporates local concerns. This approach broadens the scope of the discussion from existing analyses that focus primarily on the ways in which global forces, exerted through resource extraction or trans-polar shipping, impact the Arctic.
We present a solution method for the liner shipping network design problem which is a core strategic planning problem faced by container carriers. We propose the first practical algorithm which explicitly handles transshipment time limits for all demands. Individual sailing speeds at each service leg are used to balance sailings speed against operational costs, hence ensuring that the found network is competitive on both transit time and cost. We present a matheuristic for the problem where a MIP is used to select which ports should be inserted or removed on a route. Computational results are presented showing very promising results for realistic global liner shipping networks. Due to a number of algorithmic enhancements, the obtained solutions can be found within the same time frame as used by previous algorithms not handling time constraints. Furthermore we present a sensitivity analysis on fluctuations in bunker price which confirms the applicability of the algorithm.
The multi-commodity network flow problem is an important sub-problem in several heuristics and exact methods for designing route networks for container ships. The sub-problem decides how cargoes should be transported through the network provided by shipping routes. This paper studies the multi-commodity network flow problem with transit time constraints which puts limits on the duration of the transit of the commodities through the network. It is shown that for the particular application it does not increase the solution time to include the transit time constraints and that including the transit time is essential to offer customers a competitive product.
We introduce a decision support tool for liner shipping companies to optimally determine the sailing speed and needed fleet for a global network. As a novelty we incorporate cargo routing decisions with tight transit time restrictions on each container such that we get a realistic picture of the utilization of the network. Furthermore, we show that it is possible to extend the model to include optimal time scheduling decisions such that the time associated with transshipments is also reflected accurately. To solve the speed optimization problem we propose an exact algorithm based on Benders decomposition and column generation that exploits the separability of the problem. Computational results show that the method is applicable to liner shipping networks of realistic size and that it is important to incorporate cargo routing decisions when optimizing speed.
The objective of this article is to provide a review of literature dealing with empty container repositioning. This review is interlinked with a qualitative data analysis based on semi-structured interviews with representatives of ocean carriers, which are key actors determining empty container repositioning. Empirical evidence obtained from fieldwork in the Czech Republic, albeit limited, is used to illustrate empty repositioning management by ocean carriers in the Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) landlocked hinterlands, which have been neglected in research with a specific geographic scope. By addressing the research questions and conducting the analysis, the authors determine whether empty container repositioning is a problem only concerning equipment allocation by an ocean carrier or requires a collaborative resolution involving various parties engaged in container movements in landlocked hinterlands. This article confirms that most existing literature dealing with empty container repositioning ignores the actual dynamics of landlocked hinterlands as well as business practitioners' perspective. The authors' analysis of the empirical research complements and challenges the reviewed research studies. Based on the analysis, ocean carriers seem to be unwilling to revise their actual container management strategies focused on maritime repositioning, disregarding the potential and importance of intermodal repositioning approaches based on market collaboration. Regarding further research directions, the authors suggest the research replicability and its extension.