Maritime cybersecurity: are onboard systems ready?
Recent maritime cybersecurity accidents reveal that shipping is facing increased exposure to cyber threats, especially due to the fast-growing digitalisation of the sector, leaving vessels and their onboard systems vulnerable to cyberattacks. This research aims at evaluating the relationship among the critical dimensions influencing cybersecurity performance in the maritime industry. To achieve this, six critical dimensions related to cybersecurity preparedness are first identified through literature review, namely 'regulations', 'company procedures' from a managerial perspective and 'shipboard systems readiness', 'training and awareness', 'human factor' and 'compliance monitoring' at an operation level. A Likert-scale questionnaire is designed and used to collect empirical data from 133 seafarers and shore-based staff. Structural Equation Modelling (SEM) is applied to examine the causal relationships between the six dimensions and shipboard cybersecurity performance. The results show that 'regulations' positively influence shipping companies' cybersecurity-related 'procedures', which in turn positively affects 'shipboard systems readiness', 'training and awareness', and 'monitoring'. Further, 'training and awareness' positively influences the cybersecurity performance of ships. The results have profound implications for the shipping industry on how to strengthen their cyber practices in order to improve their cybersecurity performance. Recommendations for future academic research related to maritime cybersecurity are also provided.
Optimising the resilience of shipping networks to climate vulnerability
Climate extremes are threatening transportation infrastructures and hence require new methods to address their vulnerability and improve their resilience. However, existing studies have yet to examine the climate impacts on transportation networks systematically rather than independently assessing the infrastructures at a component level. Therefore, it is crucial to configure alternative shipping routes from a systematic perspective to reduce climate vulnerabilities and optimise the resilience of the whole shipping network. This paper aims to assess the global shipping network focusing on climate resilience by a methodology that combines climate risk indicators, centrality analysis and ship routing optimisation. The methodology is designed for overviewing the climate vulnerability of the current and future scenarios for comparison. First, a multi-centrality assessment defines the global shipping hubs and network vulnerabilities. Secondly, a shipping model is built for finding the optimal shipping route between ports, considering the port disruption days caused by climate change (e.g. extreme weather) based on the climate vulnerability analysis result from the first step. It contributes to a new framework combining the global and local seaport climate vulnerabilities. Furthermore, it recommends changing shipping routes by a foreseeable increase in port disruptions caused by extreme weather for climate adaptation.
Alignment of port policy to the context of the Physical Internet
The Physical Internet (PI) is a paradigm-changing and technology-driven vision, which is expected to significantly impact the development of the freight transport and logistics (FTL) system of today. However, the development of the FTL system towards the PI creates much uncertainty for its current stakeholders. Ports are one of those stakeholders that are expected to be profoundly affected by these developments. However, research that focuses on port policy, under the uncertain developments towards the PI, is still lacking. By providing port authorities with insights and recommendations on robust policy areas, we address this void in literature. We conduct a scenario analysis in combination with multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA) to determine the importance of port performance indicators and policy areas in different scenarios. The most significant, uncertain, and orthogonal factors for the development of the PI are technological development and institutional development. We find that for a proper alignment with the PI vision, in three out of four scenarios, ports should prioritize the implementation of digital solutions and standards, as opposed to an infrastructure focused policy.