Reliability-based calibration of fatigue design guidelines for ship structures

A simple reliability-based framework is applied to calibrate a new set of fatigue design guidelines. This new guideline considers two different approaches for the assessment of both loads, stresses and local stress raising effects, and partial safety factors must be given for any combination of these approaches. For the calibration, the lognormal reliability format is adopted because the hereby-derived partial safety factors can be combined arbitrarily. This means that with a few basic partial safety factors, the combination of partial safety factors to be applied together with any combination of calculation approaches can be determined easily. In the present paper both the adopted reliability format, the applied modeling of uncertainties and the selected target safety index are explained. Based on this, a new guideline is calibrated and the derived partial safety factors are presented. Finally, the new guideline is applied through a numerical example in order to show the applicability of the calibrated partial safety factors, and satisfactory results are found.     

Market structures in coastal shipping: what to expect in Canada following the Comprehensive and Economic Trade Agreement with the European Union?

After several years of negotiation between Canada and the European Union, the Comprehensive and Economic Trade Agreement (CETA) was ratified in early 2017. The regime set out by the Canadian Coasting Trade Act that reserves shipments of cargo between Canadian ports to Canadian vessels remains mostly untouched under CETA. Minor, yet potentially significant, changes to the regime are introduced by the trade agreement. Provisions are made to liberalize the repositioning of empty containers within Canada. The liberalization of public markets now allows European firms to compete in the Canadian dredging market. Finally, EU vessels can undertake some transshipment activity in Canada but this is limited to international cargo on the specific Montreal-Halifax route. The paper attempts to highlight some possible CETA’s consequences for domestic Canadian shipping markets. It uses industrial economics analytical tools drawn from a Structure-Conduct-Performance (SCP) paradigm. From a literature review, it reconstructs different cases of deregulation that occurred internationally. The observed transformations are then characterized in terms of the SCP model. The paper identifies some common impacts which occurred in different transportation industries after a deregulation process. Using these findings, it concludes by discussing potential impacts for domestic shipping markets in Canada.     

Supply and demand for the Eastern Canadian Arctic Sealift

The annual sealift of cargo to the Canadian Arctic has long been an essential part of the livelihood of Inuit communities. Over the past two decades, many structural changes were brought to this service and the demand has grown substantially. This paper aims to provide a better understanding of these changes by analysing demand and supply for Eastern Canadian Arctic sealift services. This analysis is based on Canadian Coast Guard vessel movement data and Statistics Canada port traffic data. It reveals that between 1987 and 2010, continuous and extreme variations in demand made it quite difficult for ship operators to adjust carrying capacity and optimise productivity. Yet, the recent industrial and population growth in the region has enabled them to reach significant gains in fleet utilisation levels.     

Actors and Their Representations in Shipping Policy: Developing the European Maritime Safety Agency

This paper discusses the European Maritime Safety Agency (EMSA). Through a chronological reconstruction, the study looks at the events that lead to the official birth of the Agency in 2003 and how it developed to its current state. The conceptual framework draws from cognitive policy analysis, a French political science perspective related to new institutionalisms. This approach emphasizes the role of the actors' own representations of their sector and the ways they fit within the socioeconomic system as a whole. This highlights the evolution of the stakeholders' positions and influence throughout the development process. Findings suggest that although considerable discrepancies between European representatives and those of the shipping industry were present in the context leading to EMSA's creation, the Agency has now established a working consensus confirming a greater implication of European authorities in the regulation of international shipping. The work also suggests that a greater attention to plays of power among stakeholders and how they translate in their representations could be pertinent to strengthen research in shipping policy.     

Decadal sea level trends in the Bay of Biscay from tide gauges, GPS and TOPEX

Sea level time series derived from TOPEX altimeter and from tide gauge measurements in the Bay of Biscay (Eastern North Atlantic Ocean) are used to investigate the regional sea level rise. Altimetry sea level anomalies are computed from TOPEX measurements and resampled into fixed along track bins in order to obtain consistent records and to approach as close as possible to the coast. Tidal corrections are critical in the estimation of sea level trends; therefore an additional analysis has been carried out in order to identify and correct for residual tidal signals. The obtained mean sea level rise in the region is + 3.09 ± 0.21 mm/year over the period 1993–2002. Tide gauges have been corrected for vertical land motions by means of collocated GPS measurements. GPS-corrected tide gauges and nearby altimetry trends are found to be statistically consistent. The relationship with the atmospheric forcing is also investigated revealing that 15% of this sea level rise is attributed to the atmospheric pressure effects.     

九世纪初连结中国与波斯湾的外销瓷:勿里洞沉船的例证

公元8-9世纪亚洲商业贸易非常活跃.中国与西亚之间不仅通过陆上丝绸之路进行贸易往来,而且开辟了海路新航线.通过海上和陆上丝绸之路,中国与西亚各国不断进行双向交流.沉没于印尼海域的勿里洞阿拉伯沉船,首次以大量生动的艺术品证据,印证这一时期中国与波斯湾之间活跃的商业往来和文化交流.勿里洞阿拉伯沉船上出土的文物有60 000多件,其中98%是陶瓷.这些陶瓷烧造于中国各窑口,但器物上的装饰具有明显的伊斯兰元素,是以伊斯兰工艺品为模板,为迎合伊斯兰市场制作的.它们得自进口的伊斯兰艺术品灵感,被复制于陶瓷上,又出口回波斯湾,完成了艺术制作上一个有趣的循环.     

Shipping line networks and the integration of South America trades

One recent transformation of liner shipping is the entry of leading carriers into north-south markets. This paper aims to test the commonly held proposition that global shipping lines entered north-south markets to feed more cargo on their established east-west services. This proposition arises out of: (1) predominant models of transport networks evolution which emphasize the influence of hubs, and (2) lines' strategy of commissioning larger vessels for east-west routes. In this perspective, the expansion of networks to southern economies serves specifically to bring more cargo on main routes to ensure volumes are sufficient to generate the desired economies of scale. This paper analyses the changing configurations of South American services. Results show that by 1999 leading shipping lines were offering direct services to all major trade ranges from the region, and numerous US loops were added to the already established European and Asian services. These new services involved multiple ports in the US; running in parallel with east-west services over a large part of the American coasts. The paper concludes that global shipping lines entered the South American market by setting up services typically configured to serve trades between North and South America; not to feed established main routes.     

Ichthyoplankton in the neritic and coastal zone of Antarctica and Subantarctic islands: A review

Since the article published by Loeb et al. [Loeb, V.J., Kellermann, A., Koubbi, P., North, A.W., White, M., 1993. Antarctic larval fish assemblages: a review. Bull. Mar. Sci. 53(2), 416–449.] about Antarctic ichthyoplankton, many surveys were carried out in different sectors of the Southern Ocean focusing on different aspects of the ecology of fish larvae. Some of these researches were conducted in the Subantarctic Kerguelen Islands and others on the continental shelf off Terre Adélie and Georges V land. Oceanographic and geographic features influence fish larvae ecology such as island mass effects, gyres, canyons. Antarctic fishes show also temporal segregation of spawning which induces temporal succession of early stage larvae. This avoids competition and probably the predation on early stages for species having few recruits. In that case, we have to understand how these larvae can deal with the match–mismatch with their preys and how they find sufficient food to survive. But our knowledge on Antarctic fish larvae is still insufficient as we do not know larvae for quite a lot of species and because of the difficulty to sample during winter.     

On the convergence of the algorithm for bilevel programming problems by Clegg and Smith

In Clegg and Smith [Transportation Research B 35 (2001) 71–82] and Battye et al. [in: M. Patriksson, M. Labbe (Eds.), Transportation Planning – State of the Art, Proceedings of the 6th Meeting of the EURO Working Group on Transportation, Gothenburg, Sweden, September 9–11, 1998, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht], Smith and colleagues present an algorithm for solving the bilevel programming problem. We show that the points reached by the algorithm are not stationary points of bilevel programs in general. We further show that, with a minor modification, this method can be expressed as an inexact penalty method for gap function-constrained bilevel programs.     

法兰克福车展速报——新概念抢先报道

全新微型通勤车在今年的法兰克福车展上,最惹眼的新潮流莫过于三大德系车欧宝、奥迪、大众的表现了:这三个一向较为传统、保守的品牌,偏偏这次一反常态,分别推出了集趣味性、玩具外形、可靠的动力潜能等特点于一身的概念车。这里我们谈的是真正的个人出行工具——车轮外凸的微型通勤车,以轻质量车身为傲,其中,大众的Nils只能容一人(但你的便当也塞得下哦),