Autonomous ships for container shipping in the Arctic routes
Journal article, 2022

This study investigates the competitiveness of various autonomous ship categories for container shipping in the Arctic route. We propose a multi-criteria decision-making (MCDM) framework using four ship categories as alternatives and eight criteria for competitiveness evaluation. We analyse collected data using the Best–Worst Method (BWM), one of the recently developed MCDM methods. The findings reveal that operating expenses, navigation aspects, and environmental protection are the three most important criteria for deploying autonomous ships in the Arctic route. Among the three investigated autonomous ships alternatives, the semi-autonomous ship operated from a shore control centre (SCC) is prioritized for Arctic shipping in the foreseeable future, when benchmarked against the conventional ship. The SCC-controlled semi-autonomous ship alternative is competitive in the majority of the considered criteria including operating expenses, capital expenses, navigation, ship-shore and ship–ship communication, search and rescue, and environmental protection.

Autonomous ship Arctic shipping Multi-criteria decision-making Northern sea route Best–worst method

Author

Ziaul Haque Munim

University of South-Eastern Norway (USN)

Rana Saha

Chalmers, Mechanics and Maritime Sciences (M2), Maritime Studies

Halvor Schøyen

University of South-Eastern Norway (USN)

Adolf KY Ng

Theo Notteboom

Journal of Marine Science and Technology

0948-4280 (ISSN) 1437-8213 (eISSN)

Subject Categories

Other Engineering and Technologies

DOI

10.1007/s00773-021-00836-8

More information

Latest update

9/26/2024