Special issue on “Smart port and shipping operations” in Maritime Policy & Management

Abstract

The world trade and international freight transport rely mainly on the maritime industry, while the maritime industry in turn survives on the efficient and sustainable operations of ports and shipping businesses. Maintaining and improving the efficient daily operations of ports and shipping companies rely on both strategic intelligence of decision makers and tangible solutions for a wide range of problems, such as berth allocation and quay/yard crane assignment, yard planning, shipping network design, fleet deployment, and speed optimization and weather routing of ships. Apart from efficiency, more and more sustainability issues have been confronting the operations of ports and shipping businesses, such as emission mitigation, increased costs, irrational investment decisions, and market turmoil. Facing these efficiency and sustainability issues, a bunch of new technologies have been emerging, such as digitalization, big data, data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI), digital twin, block chain, autonomous ships, drones, to name but a few. This special issue aims to encourage research efforts of initiating innovative solutions based on emerging technologies to address efficiency and sustainability issues facing smart port and shipping operations. Saha (2021) and Irannezhada and Faroqi (2021) are two papers in this special issue focusing on smart shipping. Saha (2021) looks forward to future autonomous operations of ships at a Shore Control Center (SCC) and the according competence requirements for the SCC Operators (SCCOs). Through semi-structured interviews with stakeholders, he finds that system understanding, communicational and technical knowledge, and maritime competence, among other factors, represent the top three key competences. He also proposes the policy implications on modifications of the competence and training requirements at the early functioning period of SCC. Bill of Lading (B/L) is one of the most important documents among stakeholders in global logistics and container shipping. A traditional paper-based B/L has many efficiency and security issues such as double-spending, duplicated documents, masqueraded information, and fraud and hacking threats. Irannezhada and Faroqi (2021) propose a conceptual framework with a multi-layer architecture that addresses these B/L issues by incorporating IoT and blockchain technologies. Technical details and roles of each layer are formulated, such as transaction verification at smart gates, privacy and consensus protocols, transaction ledger, and structure of blocks in blockchain layers. Most of the papers in this special issue are in the stream of smart ports. Boullauazan et al. (2022) examine the existing literature and propose a maturity model for smart ports consisting of two dimensions: maturation path and maturity domains. A case study is conducted towards the port of Moerdijk. In the maturation path proposed by Boullauazan et al. (2022), ‘integration focus’ is identified as the second phase of maturity of smart ports. This is further explored by Jiang et al. (2021). Jiang et al. (2021) specifically investigate how the port-centric ICT system (PCIS) can impact the overall performance of a port. The partial least squares structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) technique is adopted to test several hypotheses involving internal information integration, external information integration, port community operational capability, and port performance. Two clear pathways for port digitalization are proposed. Both the studies of Boullauazan et al. (2022) and Jiang et al. (2021) provide strategic insights and views about smart ports. MARITIME POLICY & MANAGEMENT 2023, VOL. 50, NO. 4, 413–414 https://doi.org/10.1080/03088839.2023.2196754