Special Issue "Sustainable Maritime Policy and Management"

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

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2021.

Special Issue Editor

Dr. Alessandro Farina
E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Civil and Industrial Engineering, University of Pisa, 56126 Pisa, Italy
Interests: maritime transport and port operations; rail transport; intermodality; city logistics; transport systems; sustainability

Special Issue Information

Dear colleagues,

There have been substantial improvements in maritime activities in recent years. Naval gigantism has strongly reduced transport costs. Port operations have become more automatized and port telematization has grown. The competitiveness among ports has made hinterlands more overlapped. Finally, the development of short sea shipping routes and motorways of the sea has created a valid and more sustainable alternative to road transport. On the other hand, maritime transportation and port activities cause several environmental impacts, such as water pollution, air pollution, greenhouse gas emissions, garbage, underwater noise pollution, and damage to the marine environment and fauna.

This Special Issue focuses on policies to improve the port competitiveness and the potential of waterborne transport, on the one hand, and measures to reduce the environmental footprint of maritime transport operations and to safeguard the marine environment and fauna, on the other hand. Welcome topics include, but are not strictly limited to, the following:

  • Policies and measures to safeguard the marine environment or fauna;
  • Measures to reduce the environmental footprint of sea transport and port operations;
  • Sustainable maritime transport;
  • Low-emission ships;
  • Low-emission port operations;
  • Port competitiveness and regionalization;
  • Port telematization;
  • Motorways of the sea, short sea shipping, and their competitiveness against all-road mode.

Dr. Alessandro Farina
Guest Editor

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 papers will be 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 1900 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

  • Environmental footprint of maritime transport
  • Air pollution and greenhouse gas emissions
  • Water pollution
  • Marine environment and fauna
  • Low-emission ships
  • Port competitiveness
  • Port regionalization
  • Port telematization
  • Maritime transport routes
  • Short sea shipping and motorways of the sea

Published Papers (5 papers)

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Research

Article
Legal Issues Regarding Arctic Cruise Shipping in the Russian Federation
Sustainability 2021, 13(13), 7016; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13137016 - 22 Jun 2021
Viewed by 389
Abstract
With the development of the transportation network, vessels are increasingly used in the tourism business. The international cruise business requires huge investments and a clear international and domestic legal framework. Russia has unique opportunities to develop cruise tourism as a country with the [...] Read more.
With the development of the transportation network, vessels are increasingly used in the tourism business. The international cruise business requires huge investments and a clear international and domestic legal framework. Russia has unique opportunities to develop cruise tourism as a country with the world’s longest total length of coastal line (37.7 thousand kilometres). Russia intends to develop and support cruise tourism in the Arctic and increase the tourist flow to the Arctic to a certain level in order to promote socio-economic development in the region. At the same time, a rapidly evolving tourism in the Arctic brings new challenges related to the preservation of environmental safety and protection of national interests and requires comprehensive legal cover and regulation at the national level. This article deals with Russian Federation’s laws regulating sea/river cruise shipping involving an international element. It scrutinises state rules and policies on navigation in the Russian Arctic waters and relevant International Treaties of the Russian Federation, highlights the peculiarity of the cruise shipping contract in terms of Russian laws regulating the relationship arising from it, and finally, analyses the effects of Russian legislation in the field of Arctic tourism to its development. The authors attempted to summarise experts’ views on relevant Russian legislation’ shortcomings and put forward possible solutions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Maritime Policy and Management)
Article
Institutional and Non-Institutional Governance Initiatives in Urban Transport Planning: The Paradigmatic Case of the Post-Collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa
Sustainability 2021, 13(11), 5930; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13115930 - 24 May 2021
Viewed by 488
Abstract
The relationship between the institutional (established in law) and non-institutional initiatives (not supported by law) that improve the public transport system is currently a debated topic. The purpose of this paper is to identify the most relevant aspects of this relationship during an [...] Read more.
The relationship between the institutional (established in law) and non-institutional initiatives (not supported by law) that improve the public transport system is currently a debated topic. The purpose of this paper is to identify the most relevant aspects of this relationship during an emergency event, namely the paradigmatic case study of the collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa, which occurred in August 2018. The investigation, according to a consistent methodology widely used in the literature, is made up of a selection of interviews with professional figures particularly involved in institutional structures, drawing on qualitative results, and compared with official statistics. The events that occurred in Genoa, during the phase of reorganization of the urban transport service and the circulation in the city, underlined how the response of citizenship is a crucial element, including from the governance point of view. Analytic and observational findings reveal that non-institutional initiatives smooth major criticalities where formal institutions can only produce sub-optimal transport solutions (because of the limited means they own by virtue of the moment of emergency), providing evidence that the two modes of governance are absolutely complementary. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Maritime Policy and Management)
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Article
The “Island Formation” within the Hinterland of a Port System: The Case of the Padan Plain in Italy
Sustainability 2021, 13(9), 4819; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13094819 - 25 Apr 2021
Viewed by 376
Abstract
An “island formation” is a region within the hinterland of a port which is served by another port. Some regions of southern Europe, although located within the hinterland of some Mediterranean ports, are “island formations” of northern range ports (namely, northern European ports [...] Read more.
An “island formation” is a region within the hinterland of a port which is served by another port. Some regions of southern Europe, although located within the hinterland of some Mediterranean ports, are “island formations” of northern range ports (namely, northern European ports between Le Havre and Hamburg): an example is the Padan Plain, in northern Italy, which is currently, although only partially, an “island formation” of northern range ports. Actually, a relevant number of TEUs, which have origin or destination in the Padan Plain, and have been unloaded from ships operating deep-sea routes or will be loaded on them, cross northern range ports. Several sources report this number of TEUs, but there is disagreement among them. In this paper, firstly, this number of TEUs is estimated, according to scheduled rail connections between northern range ports and Italian intermodal centres/freight villages. Afterwards, an analysis of transport costs and travel times is carried out in order to determine the advantage of unloading containers (having origin in the Far East or North America and destination in the Padan Plain) through northern range ports instead of Italian ports. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Maritime Policy and Management)
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Article
A State-Dependent Approximation Method for Estimating Truck Queue Length at Marine Terminals
Sustainability 2021, 13(5), 2917; https://doi.org/10.3390/su13052917 - 08 Mar 2021
Cited by 1 | Viewed by 339
Abstract
As international trade and freight volumes increase, there is a growing port congestion problem, leading to the long truck queues at US marine terminal gates. To address this problem, some countermeasures have been proposed and implemented for reducing truck queue length at marine [...] Read more.
As international trade and freight volumes increase, there is a growing port congestion problem, leading to the long truck queues at US marine terminal gates. To address this problem, some countermeasures have been proposed and implemented for reducing truck queue length at marine terminals. To assess the effectiveness of these countermeasures, a method for accurately estimating terminal gate truck queue length is needed. This study developed a new method, named the state-dependent approximation method, for estimating the truck queue length at marine terminals. Based on the simulation of the truck queuing system, it was found that it takes several hours for the truck queue length to reach its steady state, and neglecting the queue formation (queue dispersion) processes will cause overestimation (underestimation) of truck queue length. The developed model can take into account the queue formation and dispersion processes, and it can be used to estimate the truck queue length caused by short-term oversaturation at marine terminals. For model evaluation, a simulation-based case study was conducted to evaluate the prediction accuracy of the developed model by comparing its results with the simulated queue lengths and the results of other four existing methods, including the fluid flow model, the M/M/S queuing model, and a simulation-based regression model developed a previous study. The evaluation results indicate that the developed model outperformed the other four modeling methods for different states of queue formation and dispersion processes. In addition, this new method can accurately estimate the truck queue length caused by the short-term system oversaturation during peak hours. Therefore, it will be useful for assessing the effectiveness of the countermeasures that are targeted at reducing the peak-hour congestion at marine terminals. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Maritime Policy and Management)
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Article
Globalization and Regionalization: Empirical Evidence from Itinerary Structure and Port Organization of World Cruise of Cunard
Sustainability 2020, 12(19), 7893; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12197893 - 24 Sep 2020
Cited by 2 | Viewed by 621
Abstract
Cruise tourism is an obviously global industry in different dimensions. From a geographical perspective, cruise ships are mobile and capable of being repositioned at a company’s notice, which forms the inherent basis for its global spatial layout. As a branch of the cruise [...] Read more.
Cruise tourism is an obviously global industry in different dimensions. From a geographical perspective, cruise ships are mobile and capable of being repositioned at a company’s notice, which forms the inherent basis for its global spatial layout. As a branch of the cruise industry, the world cruise is clearly globalizing in geographical space by offering long itinerary, even round-the-world trips, for everyone. Using the schedule data from 2018 to 2019, this paper analyzes the spatial characteristics of the itinerary and port organization of Cunard, a world cruise company. We find that the itinerary distribution and port organization of Cunard are both globalization and regionalization, and the latter is the core and main component of the former. Under the influence of the COVID-19 epidemic, the global mobility of cruises has ground to a halt, while local mobility offers the possibility of its resumption as soon as possible. Turning to the regional voyage with the shorter and simple itinerary is feasible for Cunard and other world cruises, which is conducive to the realization of the resuming voyage as soon as possible. Moreover, strict boarding and safety onboard are essential. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Sustainable Maritime Policy and Management)
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