Implementation of Zero Emission Fast Shortsea Shipping

The paper describes the implementation of state-of-the-art “Industry 4.0” methods and tools, a holistic ship design optimization and modular production methods, as well as advanced battery technologies to enable a fully electrical, fast zero-emission waterborne urban transport. The design of a fast catamaran passenger ferry demonstrator planned for operation as a waterborne shuttle in the Stavanger/Norway area and of a replicator for operation at Thames River/London are elaborated, including infrastructural issues for their operation. The presented research is in the frame of the H2020 funded project “TrAM – Transport: Advanced and Modular” (www.tramproject.eu)

ESTIMATING THE COST OF GREENING OF SHORTSEA VESSELS AND THE MARKET POTENTIAL OF GREEN RETROFIT

Shortsea shipping (SSS) has attracted the interest of re-searchers and policy-makers as a viable transport alternative against mainly road haulage. Despite policy initiatives, SSS has not increased its market share nor attracted fresh interest in the market, so the fleet is ageing. Lately, due to the de-carbonization effort of the maritime industry and generally of greening the economy, SSS becomes an interesting trans-port alternative that deserves further research. This work focuses on the cost of decarbonising the global SSS fleet with a parallel interest on the EU fleet. This cost estimation is based on recent publications, and considers ships expected to be ordered and demolished; for the existing fleet the cost of retrofitting with greening technology is also estimated. Based on reasonable assumptions, the potential market of wind-assisted technologies is estimated too. This work is an outcome of the WASP Interreg project.

Application of the AHP and PROMETHEE II methods to the evaluation of the competitiveness of Polish and Russian Baltic container terminals

The rapid growth in the volume of international container transport enforces the improvement of competitiveness in the entire transport chain, including maritime container terminals. Reports and scientific surveys on the Baltic Sea Region (BSR) tend to concentrate on annual results achieved by entire ports, largely ignoring the efficiency of individual terminals. The aim of the article is to fill this research gap and consequently examine the competitiveness of the most important maritime container terminals in Poland and their Russian competitors. To this end, selected Polish and Russian bases were examined with regard to a number of criteria, such as the length of the quay (c1), the number of RTG (c2) and STS (c3) cranes, the number of shortsea shipping connections (c4), the maximum depth at the quay (c5), the distance from motorways and expressways/national roads (c6) or the distance from the national railway station (c7). The above seven criteria were subsequently used to perform a strategic group mapping as well as AHP and PROMETHEE II multi-criteria rankings that enabled to specify those Baltic Sea container nodes which are in the area of strategic benefits for the analysed market sector. According to the results obtained, the Russian Petrolesport and the Polish DCT Gdańsk are the leaders of the market. This fact confirms their competitive advantage over other market players of the sector in question.