International container design regulations and ISO standards: are they fit for purpose?

Increasing stack heights on container ships and growing volumes of high density cargo have increased the loads and stresses placed on containers, requiring an assessment of current container strength specifications. Growing adoption of terminal automation is also requiring greater standardisation in the codification and marking of containers. However, it is shown that there is widespread misunderstanding of the roles of the IMO and the ISO in regulating and promoting standards in the design, dimensions, ratings, coding, marking and strength of containers. In this paper the legal status of the IMO’s Convention for Safe Containers (CSC) and ISO standards is clarified, and a common container specification framework is developed to assess the extent to which international regulations and standards are aligned. The analysis identifies gaps and inconsistencies between regulations and standards and assesses the impact these have on operations and safety. The study highlights to policy makers anomalies arising from the recent inclusion in the CSC of direct references to ISO standards. Finally, in providing a comprehensive definition of container specifications the paper provides a knowledge base to promote theory building for applied researchers in the field of container technology and operations.     

Risk analysis of maritime accidents along the main route of the Maritime Silk Road: a Bayesian network approach

ABSTRACT

The safety of maritime transportation along the twenty-first century Maritime Silk Road (MSR) is important to ensure its development and sustainability. Maritime transportation poses risks of accidents that can cause the death or injury of crew members and damage to ships and the environment. This paper proposes a Bayesian network (BN) based risk analysis approach that is newly applied in the main route of the MSR to analyse its relevant maritime accidents. The risk data are manually collected from the reports of the accident that occurred along the MSR. Next, the risk factors are identified and the results from the modelling method can provide useful insights for accident prevention. Historical data collected from accident reports are used to estimate the prior probabilities of the identified risk factors influencing the occurrence of maritime accidents. The results show that the main influencing factors are the type and location of an accident and the type, speed, and age of the involved ship(s). In addition, scenario analysis is conducted to analyse the risks of different ships in various navigational environments. The findings can be used to analyse the probability of each possible maritime accident along MSR and to provide useful insights for shipowners’ accident prevention.     

近40年来宁波港史研究回顾与展望

古代宁波港是指1840年之前木帆船时代的宁波港口,其中心地带是三江口。在过去的近40年间,学术界对于古代宁波港的研究可以分为三个阶段。第一个是起步阶段(从上个世纪80年代开始到2000年),相关研究从学术废墟上开始复兴。第二个是发展阶段(从2001年开始到2012年),推动学术研究迅速开展的一个主要动力,就是海上丝绸之路申报世界文化遗产工作。第三个是兴盛阶段(从2013年到现在),主要得益于“一带一路”倡议的提出。虽然关于宁波港史的研究取得了丰硕成果,但依然有许多学术问题需要深入研究。     

海事管理的网格化模式探究

随着我国海上交通事业的繁荣与发展,海事管理工作正面临着复杂而深刻的变革,利用网格化模式加强海事管理工作,搭建海事网格化的管理体系成为了业界关注的重要内容。文中通过介绍网格化管理模式的基本内涵,对海事网格化管理模式进行了探讨,诠释了相关技术,并分析了海事管理网格化模式构建的可行性和优越性,同时指出了我国当前海事管理工作的基本现状,由此提出了完善海事网格化动态监管模式的有效对策,以提供给相关海事管理部门更多的借鉴和帮助。     

高职院校开设礼仪课程的探讨

本文首先列举了当前高职学生礼仪缺失的现象,并提出了在高职院校普设礼仪课程的主张;论述了礼仪教学应面对专业,面对市场;最后分析了改进礼仪教学的五种方法。     

Maritime routing and speed optimization with emission control areas

Strict limits on the maximum sulphur content in fuel used by ships have recently been imposed in some Emission Control Areas (ECAs). In order to comply with these regulations many ship operators will switch to more expensive low-sulphur fuel when sailing inside ECAs. Since they are concerned about minimizing their costs, it is likely that speed and routing decisions will change because of this. In this paper, we develop an optimization model to be applied by ship operators for determining sailing paths and speeds that minimize operating costs for a ship along a given sequence of ports. We perform a computational study on a number of realistic shipping routes in order to evaluate possible impacts on sailing paths and speeds, and hence fuel consumption and costs, from the ECA regulations. Moreover, the aim is to examine the implications for the society with regards to environmental effects. Comparisons of cases show that a likely effect of the regulations is that ship operators will often choose to sail longer distances to avoid sailing time within ECAs. Another effect is that they will sail at lower speeds within and higher speeds outside the ECAs in order to use less of the more expensive fuel. On some shipping routes, this might give a considerable increase in the total amount of fuel consumed and the CO₂ emissions.     

Container vessel fleet deployment for liner shipping with stochastic dependencies in shipping demand

The problem of optimal container vessels deployment is one of great significance for the liner shipping industry. Although the pioneering work on this problem dates back to the early 1990s, only until recently have researchers started to acknowledge and account for the significant amount of uncertainty present in shipping demand in real world container shipping. In this paper, new analytical results are presented to further relax the input requirements for this problem. Specifically, only the mean and variance of the maximum shipping demand are required to be known. An optional symmetry assumption is shown to further reduce the feasible region and deployment cost for typical confidence levels. Moreover, unlike previous work that tends to ignore stochastic dependencies between the shipping demands on the various routes (that are known to exist in the real world), our models account for such dependencies in the most general setting to date. A salient feature of our modeling approach is that the exact dependence structure does not need to be specified, something that is hard, if not simply impossible, to determine in practice. A numerical case study is provided to illustrate the proposed models.     

Robust supply vessel routing and scheduling

We solve the problem of tactical supply vessel planning arising in the upstream offshore petroleum logistics. Supply vessels deliver all the necessary materials and equipment to offshore installations from an onshore supply base according to a delivery schedule. The planning of supply vessels should be done so that their number is minimized and at the same time provide a reliable flow of supplies from the base. The execution of a weekly sailing plan is affected by weather conditions, especially in winter time. Harsh weather conditions increase the number of vessels required to perform the operations as well as the service times at the installations, and thus disrupt the schedule, leading to additional costs and reduced service level. We present a methodology for robust supply vessel planning enabling a trade-off analysis to be made between the schedules’ service level and vessels’ cost. The methodology involves the generation of multiple vessel schedules with different level of robustness using an adaptive large neighbourhood search metaheuristic and a subsequent discrete event simulation procedure for the assessment of the service level. To control the level of robustness we developed a concept of slacks and incorporated it into the metaheuristic algorithm.     

高等职业教育商务英语专业的发展研究

随着中国加入世界贸易组织,国际贸易得到迅速发展,高职商务英语专业也在不断发展和壮大。在高职教育的改革浪潮下,商务英语专业如何在已经迈入追求质量发展的高职教育之路上求得发展,成为商务英语专业今后发展的问题所在。本文将从高职改革这一大背景入手,分析商务英语专业的发展状况,进一步探讨高职商务英语专业的发展问题。     

论海事行政处罚自由裁量的限制

随着社会发展的专业化、技术化以及社会关系的复杂化,行政权的强化和扩张已经成为发展的趋势,这就必然要求行政自由裁量的扩张,但是这也必然导致行政处罚可能和法治精神的背离。根据授权,海事管理机构具有的海事行政处罚是一种较严厉的制裁性行政行为,其自由裁量权若被滥用必将侵犯行政相对人的权利,影响我国的航运事业的发展。本文对海事行政处罚自由裁量权存在的合理性、如何限制行政处罚自由裁量权的行使等方面加以探讨,以期有利于海事管理机构依法行政,切实保障行政相对人的合法权益,使航运更安全、使海洋更清洁,更好地为繁荣航运经济保驾护航。