This chapter assesses the role of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in ports and shipping. Insights from regulatory economics are used to identify industry characteristics under which the SOE model is expected to be effective. With the use of these insights, characteristics of ports, terminals and shipping services that may lead to the establishment of SOEs are identified. The empirical overview of SOEs in shipping and ports shows a rather large use of SOEs, especially in container terminal operations and port development. The use of SOEs particularly in port development can be well understood with insights from regulatory economics. The majority of SOEs in ports, terminals and shipping are active internationally. This raises important additional research questions, most importantly regarding the strategic rationale of SOE internationalization and the role of geopolitical considerations in international activities.
Studies have indicated that transportation noise is associated with higher cardiovascular mortality, whereas evidence of noise as a risk factor for respiratory and cancer mortality is scarce and inconclusive. Also, knowledge on effects of low-level noise on mortality is very limited. We aimed to investigate associations between road and railway noise and natural-cause and cause-specific mortality in the Danish population. We estimated address-specific road and railway noise at the most (LdenMax) and least (LdenMin) exposed façades for all residential addresses in Denmark from 1990 to 2017 using high-quality exposure models. Using these data, we calculated 10-year time-weighted mean noise exposure for 2.6 million Danes aged >50 years, of whom 600,492 died from natural causes during a mean follow-up of 11.7 years. We analyzed data using Cox proportional hazards models with adjustment for individual and area-level sociodemographic variables and air pollution (PM2.5 and NO2). We found that a 10-year mean exposure to road LdenMax and road LdenMin per 10 dB were associated with hazard ratios (95% confidence intervals) of, respectively, 1.09 (1.09; 1.10) and 1.10 (1.10; 1.11) for natural-cause mortality, 1.09 (1.08; 1.10) and 1.09 (1.08; 1.10) for cardiovascular mortality, 1.13 (1.12; 1.14) and 1.17 (1.16; 1.19) for respiratory mortality and 1.03 (1.02; 1.03) and 1.06 (1.05; 1.07) for cancer mortality. For LdenMax, the associations followed linear exposure-response relationships from 35 dB to 60–<65 dB, after which the function levelled off. For LdenMin, exposure-response relationships were linear from 35 dB and up, with some levelling off at high noise levels for natural-cause and cardiovascular mortality. Railway noise did not seem associated with higher mortality in an exposure-response dependent manner. In conclusion, road traffic noise was associated with higher mortality and the increase in risk started well below the current World Health Organization guideline limit for road traffic noise of 53 dB.
As a reaction to an increasing concern with the decreasing of standards in shipping during the 1970s and 1980s the International Maritime Organization adopted the ISM Code, which became mandatory in 1998. This study revisits the ISM Code, firstly exploring the genesis of the code at the international level, and then its operationalization at the national and local level. Based on a three-step case study, the interplay between the essence of the ISM Code and praxis onboard is explored. The study explores the distortion and erosion of the essence of the ISM Code when implemented on the national level in Danish law (step one) and by two Danishbased companies (step two) and finally investigates the local effect of the code as it is displayed onboard (step three).
The study is conducted as an applied socio-legal study; thus, it adopts both an internal (doctrinal) and an external (empirical) approach. It also combines the topdown and bottom-up perspective, consequently applying different methods to fit the content of the different levels examined, while maintaining a qualitative approach.
The research design is inspired by the hermeneutic circle. The first circle (Part I the international level) explores the genesis of the ISM Code, aim to explore the causal explanation for and to determine the essence of the ISM Code. The ‘essence’ is constituted by the ‘principles’ that the regulators intended to be essential to achieve ‘the purpose’. With Santos’s cartographic metaphor as a theoretical analytical framework combined with legal dogmatic method, the first part concentrates on small-scale legality (the international level). The second circle (Part II) is related to medium-scale legality (the national/transnational level). Part II explore the operationalisation of the ISM Code as it is implemented in Danish law, applying legal dogmatic method, combined with analyses of written formal communication to identify the inter-legality that distort the principles when implemented at a national level (step one and two). The third circle (Part III) relates to large-scale legality, applying Goffman’s theoretical framework to analyse the micro level, that constitute the onboard praxis. Praxis is compared with legislation, v revealing a frontstage behaviour that is compliant with regulation and documented by checklists, while in fact praxis deviate, ‘to make it work’ the crew exhibits what Goffman denoted a backstage behaviour.
The ISM Code introduces meta-regulation as a regulatory mechanism. Metaregulation is linked to Santos’s concept of globalization and governance matrix; the study applies Parker’s definition of meta-regulation and the triple loop to study the concept.
The study identifies three principles that constitute the essence of the ISM Code; (1) to establish a genuine link between the company and the flag State; (2) to ensure that the company becomes responsible for the ship’s operation; and (3) to empower the master, ensuring her or his authority. The analyses proved that each of the three principals were distorted at respectively meso and micro level, and that even though the intent was to promote good ship management, in reality it has provided companies the opportunity strut in borrowed plumes.
Determination of coverage and thickness of marine growth is a useful tool for determining structural loads and drags on marine structures and ships. In this work, we present an algorithmic program based on sonar and optical camera measurements, that estimates both the coverage and thickness of marine-fouling on off-shore structures. The marine-fouling composition is estimated using a Deep-Neural Network, trained using supervised methods, which can distinguish between hard/soft fouling species and the background water and structural components. The marine-fouling thickness is estimated using an HF Forward Looking Sonar, which is applied as a sensitive ultrasonic thickness gauge, when combined with a thickness measurement algorithm. Combined the measurements provide a localized estimate of the marine-fouling coverage and loadings across the structural surfaces, which can be used for automatic inspection evaluation and mission planning.
This chapter concerns the digitalization of the maritime sector with a specific focus on business models. It is the argument of the article that current research in Maritime Informatics is focused on technological optimizations and thus lacks a commercial aspect in order to grasp the importance of digitalization in the shipping sector. In order to fill this gap a business model framework is suggested in the article with focus on the level of respectively customer-based-value-propositions and land versus sea. Then follows the empirical case of the Danish shipping company Norden and the development from 2015 to 2020. Norden is a leading commercial operator of dry bulk and product tanker vessels with more than 350 vessels in operation. The conclusion of the case is that Norden so far has regarded digitalization as tool for decision taking processes, which in the long-term should lead to compete advantages in terms of more efficient decisions based on big data and advanced algorithms. The shipping company has on the other hand decided not to use digitalization for the development of new software products and in accordance to presented digitalization matrix focused on indirect value proposition for the customers rather than direct customer-based initiatives. This focus confirms the hypothesis that digitalization in the dry bulk and tanker segment will often be based on indirect value propositions while digitalization in container-shipping might have a more direct relation to specific customer-based value propositions. This distinction is linked to the business-to-business nature of dry bulk and tanker and the more mixed business to business/business to consumer nature of container shipping—in. particular when the container shipping is integrated to the value chains and thus moved closer to the ultimate customers’ preferences and services.
This chapter provides first a discussion of how maritime security has been conceptualized and theorized and how the field has evolved. It discusses the more particular debates on dedicated maritime security issues: piracy, terrorism, smuggling, environmental crimes and the protection of critical maritime infrastructure. Although the oceans have featured occasionally in the literature on security, peace and development, it is fair to say that for decades scholars were suffering from what some have referred to as collective ‘seablindness’. A range of maritime insecurities have been extensively analysed. These include piracy; terrorism; various forms of smuggling; environmental crimes, hereunder illegal fishing; as well as a nascent literature on maritime critical infrastructures. With ongoing crises in different parts of the world’s oceans, maritime insecurity will continue to be recognized as one of the core dimensions of violence and insecurity. Maritime security also needs to be seen in the context of other international policy areas.
The report summarizes a major interview survey among freight forwarders, shipping companies and agents, as well as North Jutland customers of containerized sea transport.
This PhD thesis examines the role of market-based measures (MBMs) in incentivizing international shipping greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions reductions to leverage the decarbonization efforts of the International Maritime Organization (IMO). The research motivation sprang from the Initial IMO Strategy, which, among other climate ambitions, envisages at least a 50% curb of GHG emissions until 2050 vis-a-vis 2008 levels. The regulatory framework involves several candidate measures, including MBMs, i.e., environmental policies like carbon taxes and emissions trading systems (ETS) that enforce the "polluter-pays" principle, and thus provide fiscal incentives to stakeholders to eliminate their carbon footprint.
The assessment of MBMs as means of decarbonizing shipping is based on three main pillars: their economic efficiency, their environmental effectiveness, and their climate policy design. Compliance with carbon pricing regimes can entail the adoption of both operational measures, such as speed reduction, route reconfiguration, or voyage optimization techniques, and technological measures like the uptake of zero-carbon technologies and alternative marine fuels. Due to this wide range of conformity practices, this thesis assesses several short- and long-term responses to MBMs in order to encapsulate their cost effectiveness in relation to their carbon abatement potential.
From a climate policy design perspective, the two most prominent types of MBMs are the carbon taxes, a fixed-price approach that provides carbon price certainty, and the ETSs, a fixedquantity system that secures that GHG emissions levels are met. At first, the study evaluates the prospects of a carbon levy to achieve GHG emissions reductions by analyzing the macroeconomic effects of freight rates and fuel prices in inducing slow steaming as an operational response to the MBM. The results show that market conditions influence the overall effectiveness of a tax and that the attained reductions, although significant, are insufficient to reach the 50% decarbonization targets. Moreover, considering the imminent inclusion of the maritime sector into the EU ETS, the thesis examines the scenario of liner shipping operators opting for route reconfigurations as an operational response to a regional ETS. The outputs reveal that replacing EU ports with nearby non-EU competitor ports becomes cost-effective for minimal EU carbon prices. The action would result in carbon leakage, EU ETS evasion, loss of EU ETS revenue, and penalization of the EU ports.
To the extent that MBMs induce technological changes, this thesis evaluates the level of carbon pricing needed to close the price gap between alternative and conventional marine fuels. The analysis considers the capital and operational costs for implementing and utilizing alternative marine fuels onboard and develops their marginal abatement cost curves (MACCs) to evaluate their cost-competitiveness and carbon abatement spectrum. The analysis indicates that to reach full maritime decarbonization, fuels such as green liquid hydrogen and their supporting technology, as of today’s cost estimations, would require a carbon price of up to 700 USD/MT CO2e to become cost-competitive.
The thesis concludes that accounting for a well-to-wake scope of emissions will create the right
incentives for developing sustainable alternative marine fuel production pathways to facilitate
shipping’s future energy demand. Revenues from MBMs will be substantial and can accelerate
R&D, scale-up the availability of alternative fuels, subsidize "fist-movers" and green ships and
reverse possible detrimental effects of carbon pricing to developing countries such as the Least
Developed Countries (LDCs) and the Small Island Developing States (SIDS).