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Operations and Management for Sustainable and Green Maritime Transportation—2nd Edition
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Operations and Management for Sustainable and Green Maritime Transportation—2nd Edition

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Transportation".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2025) | Viewed by 7254

Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Shuaian Wang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies, Faculty of Business, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China
Interests: shipping network design; port operations planning; urban transport network modeling; sustainable transportation and green logistics
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Jianfeng Zheng

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Transportation Engineering College, Dalian Maritime University, Dalian 116026, China
Interests: maritime transportation; liner shipping network design
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals
Dr. Tingsong Wang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Management, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China
Interests: maritime transportation; shipping network modeling
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

We cordially invite you to submit a paper to our Special Issue entitled “Operations and Management for Sustainable and Green Maritime Transportation” in Sustainability, which is covered by SSCI and SCIE and has an Impact Factor of 2.576.

With specific reference to maritime administration and management, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) noted with concern that the health of oceans and marine biodiversity are negatively affected by marine pollution from several land-based sources, including vessels and ports. To sustain the development of maritime transportation, “sustainable and green maritime,” which operates with a good balance between environmental impact and economic interests, has been the focus of marine industries and government agencies, and requires that they investigate energy saving and reduce the impact of their operations on society and the environment.

Maintaining and improving the daily operations of vessels and ports is extremely complicated, capital-intensive, and cost-sensitive. Research on the operations and management surrounding sustainable and green maritime transportation is gaining ground in all aspects and sectors of the maritime industry, and mainly focuses on efficiency and sustainability issues, involving the allocation or assignment of resources such as berthing space and yard space; the scheduling of critical equipment such as quay cranes, yard cranes, and container trucks (or AGVs); shipping service network design; fleet deployment; vessel speed optimization; vessel slot allocation; and emission mitigation and reduction, etc. Along with these efficiency and sustainability issues in port and shipping operations, several new technologies have emerged, such as digitalization, big data, data analytics, artificial intelligence, and block chain, to name a few. Nevertheless, the ever-tightening environmental and social criteria prescribed by international regulations has called for innovative scientific or data-driven approaches to manage maritime transportation activities.

This Special Issue on “Operations and Management for Sustainable and Green Maritime Transportation” to be published in Sustainability aims to bring together recent theoretical, applied, and methodological advances concerning operations and management in sustainable and green maritime transportation, regardless of whether they are related to hardware, software, or innovative approaches, and encourages researchers involved in maritime studies to engage in making maritime transportation sustainable and green. Both research and review papers are welcome.

The possible research topics include but are not limited to:

  • Sustainable maritime transportation planning and management;
  • Sustainable maritime network or fleet optimization;
  • Optimization models for port and shipping operations;
  • Revenue/yield management of maritime transportation;
  • Innovations for sustainability issues with emerging technologies;
  • Environmental issues in the maritime industry;
  • Sustainable maritime transportation and competitive advantages;
  • Managing sustainability through collaboration and coordination;
  • Economic analysis of sustainable maritime transportation;
  • Research for the future era of automatic shipping and ports.

Prof. Dr. Shuaian Wang
Dr. Jianfeng Zheng
Dr. Tingsong Wang
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Sustainability is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • sustainable and green
  • operations and management
  • optimization models

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

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33 pages, 1443 KiB  
Article
Multi-Stakeholder Risk Assessment of a Waterway Engineering Project During the Decision-Making Stage from the Perspective of Sustainability
by Yongchao Zou, Jinlong Xiao, Hao Zhang, Yanyi Chen, Yao Liu, Bozhong Zhou and Yunpeng Li
Sustainability 2025, 17(12), 5372; https://doi.org/10.3390/su17125372 - 11 Jun 2025
Viewed by 383
Abstract
Serving as critical sustainable transportation infrastructure, inland waterways provide dual socioeconomic and ecological value by (1) facilitating high-efficiency freight logistics through cost-effective bulk cargo transport while stimulating regional economic growth, and (2) delivering essential ecosystem services including flood regulation, water resource preservation, and [...] Read more.
Serving as critical sustainable transportation infrastructure, inland waterways provide dual socioeconomic and ecological value by (1) facilitating high-efficiency freight logistics through cost-effective bulk cargo transport while stimulating regional economic growth, and (2) delivering essential ecosystem services including flood regulation, water resource preservation, and biodiversity conservation. This study establishes a stakeholder-centered risk assessment framework to enhance decision-making of waterway engineering projects and promote the sustainable development of Inland Waterway Transport. We propose a three-layer approach: (1) identifying key stakeholders in the decision-making stage of waterway engineering projects through multi-dimensional criteria; (2) listing and classifying decision-making risks from the perspectives of managers, users, and other stakeholders; (3) applying the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) to prioritize key risks and proposing a risk assessment model based on fuzzy reasoning theory to evaluate decision-making risks under uncertain conditions. This framework was applied to the Yangtze River Trunk Line Wuhan–Anqing Waterway Regulation Project. The results show that the risk ranking is managers, users, and other stakeholders, among which the risk of engineering freight demand is particularly prominent. This suggests that we need to pay attention to optimizing material transportation and operational organization, promote the development of large-scale ships, and realize the diversification of ship types and transportation organizations. This study combines fuzzy reasoning with stakeholder theory, providing a replicable tool for the Waterway Management Authority to address the complex sustainability challenges in global waterway development projects. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Operations and Management for Sustainable and Green Maritime Transportation—2nd Edition)
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33 pages, 9219 KiB  
Article
Research on Path Optimization for Collaborative UAVs and Mothership Monitoring of Air Pollution from Port Vessels
by Lixin Shen, Jie Sun and Dong Yang
Sustainability 2024, 16(12), 4948; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16124948 - 9 Jun 2024
Viewed by 2048
Abstract
The seriousness of vessel air pollution has forced the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to introduce a series of relevant laws and regulations. This paper proposes a monitoring scheme based on the synergistic operation of motherships and UAVs. This scheme innovatively adopts a harbor [...] Read more.
The seriousness of vessel air pollution has forced the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to introduce a series of relevant laws and regulations. This paper proposes a monitoring scheme based on the synergistic operation of motherships and UAVs. This scheme innovatively adopts a harbor sea patrol vessel or the other official vessel (mothership) as the mobile power supply base for UAVs and realizes efficient and accurate monitoring of vessel air pollution in the pre-monitored area at sea by carrying multiple UAVs. The focus of this paper is on the path optimization problem for multi-UAV collaboration with mothership (MUCWM) monitoring, where the objective is to minimize the total monitoring time for MUCWM. The following three main aspects are studied in this paper: (1) multi-UAV monitoring path optimization; (2) the collaboration mechanism between the mothership and multiple UAVs; and (3) mothership traveling path optimization. In order to effectively solve the above problems, this thesis constructs a path optimization model for multi-UAV collaborative mothership monitoring of air pollution from vessels in port waters; solves the model using the improved adaptive differential evolution (IADE) algorithm; and verifies the effectiveness of the model and the algorithm by using the position data in the Automatic Identification System (AIS) of vessels in Ningbo Zhoushan Port. Through the performance comparison and sensitivity analysis of the algorithm, it is confirmed that the algorithm can effectively solve the path planning problem of the collaborative operation between the mothership and multiple UAVs. The research results in this paper not only help to reduce the air pollution level of harbor vessels and improve the efficiency of sea cruising but also play an important supporting role in the enforcement of relevant emission regulations. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Operations and Management for Sustainable and Green Maritime Transportation—2nd Edition)
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26 pages, 5057 KiB  
Article
Assessing the Belt and Road Initiative’s Impact: A Multi-Regression Model Based on Economic Interaction
by Tingsong Wang, Jingyi Xu, Yong Jin and Shuaian Wang
Sustainability 2024, 16(11), 4694; https://doi.org/10.3390/su16114694 - 31 May 2024
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 2910
Abstract
This study examines the impact of joining the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on the economies of ASEAN countries, focusing on the shipping industry’s performance. Ten economic interaction indicators were analyzed using data from 2015–2022 and predicting future data for 2015–2030 through GM(1,1) [...] Read more.
This study examines the impact of joining the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) on the economies of ASEAN countries, focusing on the shipping industry’s performance. Ten economic interaction indicators were analyzed using data from 2015–2022 and predicting future data for 2015–2030 through GM(1,1) and FOA-SVR models. The principal component regression (PCR) model, combined with the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP), assessed the correlation of these indicators with GDP and port container throughput (PCT). The findings reveal a strong correlation between economic interaction scores with China and economic and shipping performance, highlighting Chinese investment’s significant impact on GDP and shipping connectivity’s substantial influence on container throughput. This study provides a framework for quantifying organizational engagement levels and policy effectiveness. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Operations and Management for Sustainable and Green Maritime Transportation—2nd Edition)
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23 pages, 6523 KiB  
Essay
Data-Driven Analysis of Regional Ship Carbon Emission Reduction: The Bohai Bay Area Case Study
by Yangning Ning, Tao Li, Libo Yang and Bing Chen
Sustainability 2025, 17(3), 1159; https://doi.org/10.3390/su17031159 - 31 Jan 2025
Viewed by 1209
Abstract
With the tightening of marine carbon emission reduction policies, the sustainable development of the shipping industry has attracted much attention, and it is of great significance to use Automatic Identification System (AIS) big data to study the carbon emissions of marine ships. Taking [...] Read more.
With the tightening of marine carbon emission reduction policies, the sustainable development of the shipping industry has attracted much attention, and it is of great significance to use Automatic Identification System (AIS) big data to study the carbon emissions of marine ships. Taking ships around Bohai Bay as the research object, this paper constructs a calculation method of ship carbon emissions driven by the ship AIS trajectory. The AIS information of ships is extracted, and the sailing status is determined. The carbon emission calculation model is built based on the AIS data, the carbon emission in 2023 is empirically measured, and the characteristics are analyzed. At the same time, a speed simulation model was built to evaluate the impact of speed reduction on carbon emissions and put forward emission reduction measures. The results show that the carbon emission of ships around Bohai Bay in 2023 was 8.8072 million tons, with cargo ships contributing the most, and the carbon emissions of the cruise state was significant. A 10% reduction in speed would reduce annual carbon emissions by about 6%. This study provides a reference for understanding the impact of speed on carbon emissions and formulating emission reduction measures, which can be used to compare historical and future data to support the emission reduction in ports and shipping enterprises. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Operations and Management for Sustainable and Green Maritime Transportation—2nd Edition)
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