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Accessing the world's oceans is essential for monitoring and sustainable management of the maritime domain. Difficulty in reaching remote locations has resulted in sparse coverage, undermining our capacity to deter illegal activities and gather data for physical and biological processes. Uncrewed Surface Vessels (USVs) have existed for over two decades and offer the potential to overcome difficulties associated with monitoring and surveillance in remote regions. However, they are not yet an integral component of maritime infrastructure. We analyse 15 years of non-autonomous and semi-autonomous USV-related literature to determine the factors limiting technological diffusion into everyday maritime operations. We systematically categorised over 1,000 USV-related publications to determine how government, academia and industry sectors use USVs and what drives their uptake. We found a striking overlap between these sectors for 11 applications and nine drivers. Low cost was a consistent and central driver for USV uptake across the three sectors. Product 'compatibility' and lack of 'complexity' appear to be major factors limiting USV technological diffusion amongst early adopters. We found that the majority (21 of 27) of commercially available USVs lacked the complexity required for multiple applications in beyond the horizon operations. We argue that the best value for money to advance USV uptake is for designs that offer cross-disciplinary applications and the ability to operate in an unsheltered open ocean without an escort or mothership. The benefits from this technological advancement can excel under existing collaborative governance frameworks and are most significant for remote and developing maritime nations.

Cruise lines are transforming the modern fleet with new technologies and designs to protect the oceans, air and destinations that millions of cruise passengers enjoy each year. Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) showcases cruise lines' technologies that sustainably reduce the industry's environmental footprint.

China has deployed a network of sensors and communications capabilities between Hainan Island and the Paracel Islands in the northern South China Sea. These capabilities are part of a "Blue Ocean Information Network" (蓝海信息网络) developed by China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), a state-owned company, to aid in the exploration and control of the maritime environment using information technology. The network constructed in the northern South China Sea between early 2016 and 2019 is referred to as a demonstration system. However, future plans for the Blue Ocean Information Network involve expanding the sensor and communications network to the rest of the South China Sea, the East China Sea, and other ocean areas far from Chinese territory. While the Blue Ocean Information Network is largely cast as an environmental monitoring and communications system, the military utility of its sensing and communications functions makes its development important to monitor.

Under strict resource and environmental constraints, improving the overall green efficiency of the industrial chain is crucial to the sustainable development of the marine ship industry. Based on the data of 40 listed companies in the industry chain from 2015 to 2019, the meta-frontier framework and three-stage epsilon based measure (EBM) model are employed to study the green technical efficiency (GTE) in each link of the industry chain and the technical gap between each link. The impact of the external environment on GTE, the main reasons hindering the development of GTE, and the ways to improve GTE are also discussed for policy reference. The results show that: (1) under the meta-frontier, the GTEs of the whole industry chain and the composed links are all high and rising year by year. (2) There are obvious green technological development gaps among the links of the industry chain. The GTEs are ranked as the upstream>the downstream>the midstream. (3) The inefficiencies of green technology (GTEI) in the upstream and downstream of the industry chain come from endogenous hindrance, while the GTEI of the midstream is due to exogenous hindrance. (4) The external environment has a significant influence on the development of GTE in the industrial chain. Highly open and innovative external environment can effectively reduce the input redundancy. (5) After eliminating the external influencing factors and random interferences, the actual GTE of the industrial chain is only 0.4 or so, with more serious imbalance among the three links. Therefore, it is important for the marine ship industry chain to optimize the allocation of innovation resources and cultivate an open and shared innovation environment.

In a collaboration with researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS Institute) has started the world's first major research program on autonomous floating vessels in metropolitan areas. Roboat will be conducted by researchers from MIT, Delft University of Technology (TUD) and Wageningen University and Research (WUR). The five-year program has a budget of €25 million and is set in Amsterdam.

Hyperloop One announced a partnership with port-terminal operator DP World to study the viability of using the speed-of-sound transportation technology to unload ocean-container cargo.

Carnival Corp Installs Exhaust Gas Cleaning Technology On 60 Percent Of Fleet.

5 Innovative Robotic Technologies For The Maritime Industry.

A warming climate is opening up new shipping routes through the Arctic Ocean as summer sea ice shrinks. Developing technologies allow mega-ships unprecedented in size and cargo to take to the seas. North America is increasingly exporting oil, shifting global trade patterns.

VTT Technical Research Centre of Finland is developing safe steering for the remote-monitored and controlled autonomous ships of the future. The new technology has been developed for navigation systems and ship autopilots, which steer ships automatically.

MAERSK Line to test autonomous vessel technology.

Watch: Anti-Terror Boat Stopping Technology in Action.

Scandlines invests in wind propulsion technology.

New Center of Expertise will provide opportunities for identification, evaluation and transition of new blue technologies.

Ports drive tracking technology innovation.

One of the world's most endangered whale species could have added protection from threats posed by human marine activity, through technology developed by the University of East Anglia (UEA).

Seamounts are prominent features of the seafloor that are often located in Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction (ABNJs). Whilst comprehensive biological information is lacking on most of these features, they have been recognised for hosting high biodiversity across multiple trophic levels. Technological advancements have enabled greater exploitation of biological resources further offshore with increasing concern over the long-term impacts of anthropogenic activities on vulnerable distant and deep-sea habitats. Analysis of ex situ vessel tracking technologies such as Automatic Identification Systems (AIS) have enabled spatial patterns of fishing activity to be monitored over large geographical areas. In this study, analysis of fishing activity within 30 km of seamount summits at the global scale found that these features within the waters of the Pacific Island Group and the Mediterranean Sea were subject to the highest levels of longlining and trawling activities respectively. Fishing in proximity to seamounts is dominated by the flag states of Taiwan, China, Japan, South Korea and Spain. Furthermore, our results reveal that the majority of sea areas managed by many Regional Fishery Management Organisations (RFMOs) have experienced increased fishing activity at seamounts compared to areas in the same ocean basin without management. This study demonstrates how free web-accessible data can be used to gain insights into remote areas where in situ research is prohibitively expensive and logistically challenging.

Women constitute a mere 1.28 % of currently active seafarers. This is despite the concerted international efforts over the years to promote female participation in the maritime industry. Previous studies have identified several causal factors for the dismal representation of women in this sector. However, the current disruptions in the maritime workplace, mainly caused by the introduction of digital technologies and automation, have created a novel environment that limits the relevance of several previous research findings. This study aims to address that gap by investigating the factors impacting women seafarers' participation in the transition period leading to a technology-rich, highly automated future in the maritime industry. This paper is part of a larger qualitative study that looks at workplace participation and learning by seafarers. The data for this study was collected through semi-structured interviews and focus-groups conducted among seafarers and other maritime stakeholders. The thematic analysis of the data identified some physical, social, and psychological barriers that impede the workplace participation of women seafarers. Additionally, our analysis shows that the progressive adoption of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ship (MASS) and Shipping 4.0 will play an important role in improving women's participation in the shipping sector. However, to facilitate this, maritime policy makers and educators need to ensure a level playing field by providing gender-neutral access and opportunities to acquire skills and competences essential in a highly digitalised future workplace. Improving gender diversity is an essential step to align the maritime industry with the United Nations' Sustainable Development Goal 5.

For decades, the shipping sector has been incorporated into the global decarbonization process. At present, global shipping - as a whole - aims to reduce its emission levels by 40 % by 2030 in relation to the 2008 level. In reducing greenhouse gas emissions, regulations such as the MARPOL 73/78 Convention and Energy Efficiency Design Index as well as other monitoring and managing schemes already in operation (e.g., Ship Energy Efficiency Management Plan and Energy Efficiency Operational Indicator) play a crucial role in measuring fuel consumption and ship engine emission output. Energy Efficiency Existing Ship Index (EEXI) is another measure, projected to be ratified in 2023, in-line with decarbonization targets in which the International Maritime Organization has planned a 70 % reduction in emissions level by 2050 using the same 2008 baseline. For this to happen, ship speed may need to be reduced, a decrease of fleet capacity may also need to be considered, and new ships may need to replace older ones already in service. The costs of implementing these types of reforms are obviously significant to the sector. Such change will augment the overall shipping overhead, effecting subsequent transportation and consumer costs. This paper aims to specify the scale of the expected costs of implementing EEXI globally. The current maritime fleet has been analyzed in terms of energy demand, deadweight tonnage, and expected CO2 emission reduction marginal abatement costs (MAC). Two pathways to achieve the desired EEXI values are presented, including the most common and available technologies to reduce demand. These technologies are subjected to MAC valuation and presented quantitatively for the world fleet. The research also investigates alternative fuel options in regard to lessening the CO2 impact, developing wind support systems, and avoiding conventional advancements to ships (e.g., upgrading the propeller or the propulsion system). At length, the target of the work is t

With the opening of the national carbon trading market and the coming of the post-epidemic era, the government actively promotes the carbon quota policy to fundamentally achieve carbon emission reduction. This paper corresponds the shipping cycle to the shipping market demand situation during the epidemic, incorporates the shipping cycle characteristics and government quota characteristics into a multi-stage evolutionary game model. Later, the study analyzes the equilibrium points of the game parties at each stage and finally investigates the influence of factors such as technological improvement on the strategy choice of shipping enterprises through sensitivity analysis. The study found that the government's carbon quota policy is influenced by shipping market demand. During the peak shipping season, the government's quota policy is binding on shipping enterprises. In the low season of shipping, the binding effect of government's quota policy on shipping enterprises will be reduced, or even appear to be invalid. Therefore, the government should forecast the demand situation of the shipping market, gradually relax the regulation during the peak season of shipping, and strengthen the regulation before the low season of shipping. Shipping enterprises should increase the research and development of carbon emission reduction technology to reduce carbon emissions from the root to realize the sustainable development of ports and marine-related industries in the post-epidemic era.