The economic impact study of maritime policy issues: application to the German case

Input-output analysis basically provides an estimation of a sector's economic impact by taking into account the indirect effects on all other sectors. For purposes of policy making, however, this may produce rather rigid and inaccurate results. This paper, therefore, introduces some extensions to the basic impact analysis. These extensions secure flexibility, completeness and accurateness of the outcomes. First, an accurate cost structure is determined in a bottom-up approach, i.e. by using data from a sample of representative companies. This allows for reliable outcomes and a flexible definition of sub-sectors. Secondly, the analysis is made in an intercountry context. Thirdly, the expenditure effects of generated income are determined by a macroeconomic module. Fourthly, company-level responses to alternative policy scenarios are investigated and translated into changing model parameters. These four basic elements are applied in a case study concerning the shipping sector of Germany. The scenarios are a continuation of the present policy, a laissez-faire policy, and two framework policies in which the government creates a favourable environment for shipping companies. For each scenario, the effects on value added, employment, tax revenues and expenditures are analysed and evaluated. This paper, thus, shows the relevance of accordingly amplified input-output analysis for policy purposes.     

Allision risk analysis of offshore petroleum installations on the Norwegian Continental Shelf—an empirical study of vessel traffic patterns

The Norwegian Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) requires offshore petroleum operators on the Norwegian Continental Shelf (NCS) to perform risk assessments of impacts (allisions) between passing ships and offshore installations. These risk assessments provide a basis for defining the allision accidental load that the installation shall be designed for. Even though the risk of allision is small, the potential consequences can be catastrophic. In a worst-case scenario, an allision may result in the total loss of an installation. The ageing industry standard allision risk model, COLLIDE, calculates the risk of impacts between passing (non-field-related) ships and installations based on Automatic Identification System (AIS) data. Both the COLLIDE risk model and a new Bayesian allision risk model currently under development are highly sensitive to variations in vessels’ passing distances, especially close proximity passings. Allision risk assessments are typically performed during the design and development phase of an installation, which means that historical AIS data are used “as is”, disregarding future changes to the traffic pattern when the new installation is placed on a location. This article presents an empirical study of one of the most important variables used to calculate the risk of allision from passing vessels, namely passing distance. The study shows that merchant vessels alter course to achieve a safe passing distance to new surface offshore petroleum installations. This indicates that the results of current allision risk assessments are overly conservative.     

The gender perspective in maritime education and training

The aim of this article is to show if and how European maritime education and training institutions have met the increasing enrolment of women, and how shipping in general has reacted to gender equality. WMU has partly been the source for finding data related to studies in a multicultural and gender (minority) mixture of students and professors. In addition to a questionnaire to maritime education and training institutions, unstructured conversations with WMU students and professors have contributed to fact findings. Apparently, there is more to be done in order to have women compete on a level playing field in the sphere of shipping. Shipping is historically male dominated and conservative, so it is well understood that there are ropes to be untied. In this article, there are examples on how stakeholders in society have introduced policies on how to meet diversities. It is recommended that universities seriously pursue this trend. I wish to appeal to educational institutions to publish a university policy on the gender perspective and diversity management in general. The policy must be in writing in order for staff and students to understand and remember the content of the policy. This is an issue that should follow the quality assurance aims and goals and should be posted in a public place within the university’s premises for everybody to be reminded.     

Factors that promote innovation in shipping companies

This study seeks to identify factors that promote innovation in shipping companies. The study is based on an empirical investigation of 63 companies headquartered in Norway. The results imply that organizational and interorganizational variables are important to innovation. Three aspects of innovation are focused on: (1) service/product innovations, (2) market innovations, and (3) production method innovations. The explanatory variables that are applied in this study capture between 13–51% of the variability of the measures of innovation. The results indicate that an explicit strategy that promotes innovation is very important for the actual level of innovation within shipping companies. In management literature, it is often assumed that organic organizational features like decentralized decision-making promote innovation. The opposite features are assumed to restrain innovation. However, the results do not support these basic assumptions. For example, it seems to be important that managers make precise decisions in order to promote innovation.     

An analysis of decision-making processes in multicultural maritime scenarios

This paper presents a simple formulation in the form of a pipe network for modelling the global container-shipping network. The cost-efficiency and movement-patterns of the current container-shipping network have been investigated using heuristic methods. The model is able to reproduce the overall incomes, costs, and container movement patterns for the industry as well as for the individual shipping lines and ports. It was found that the cost of repositioning empties is 27% of the total world fleet running cost and that overcapacity continues to be a problem. The model is computationally efficient. Implemented in the Java language, it takes one minute to run a full-scale network on a Pentium IV computer.     

纤维光学提高了建模精度

新开发的安装在海底的永久性纤维光学地震监控系统,大大提高了近海石油行业海底建模精度,并加快了石油开采速度。     

Risk analysis of vessel traffic systems

A risk analysis approach to the capital planning of vessel traffic services (VTS) is embedded within the benefit-cost methodology. The method is discussed in the Canadian context, but has already been used to plan the Hong Kong VTS system. Recently, in response to the Exxon Valdez oil spill, the US Congress asked for a study of the requirements for VTS systems in American ports and waterways, and the US Coast Guard chose to apply our risk analysis approach to their study.     

A portfolio approach to strategic chartering decisions

Modern management techniques are slowly but surely being introduced aslo in shipping management. Large sections of the industry practises strategic management at various levels in the firm. This paper outlines a method for deciding chartering strategies in the international bulk shipping industry. A well known risk/return model is tailored to transportation contracts in the shipping industry. The model delineates a set of optimally defined transportation contracts that may serve as a basis for the shipowner's strategic decisions. The strategies and elements of strategies suggested by the model have historically been practised by a number of successful shipowners. An important conclusion of the paper is that no second best problems exists and hence movement towarts the optimal solution is advocated even if such a solution cannot or will not be reached. Additionally, the paper provides an organized way of crafting, analysing and applying chartering strategies where the outcomes can be clearly defined and analysed based on well known statistical concepts and theories.     

On the estimation of trip matrices in the case of missing and uncertain data

The problem of missing data in the base (calibration) year is of major importance when applying the gravity model in transportation planning, because base year data are used for calibration of the model. In this article, this problem is tackled by solving an optimization problem for the prediction year for values of the entropy level and the proportions of trips in a given stratification of the cells of the trip matrix estimated in the base year. The problem of uncertain data in the prediction year is handled by replacing equality constraints for the marginal totals in the prediction year by interval constraints. Computational results are given for trip data from the Linköping area.