Toward Digitalization of Fishing Vessels to Achieve Higher Environmental and Economic Sustainability.

Fishing vessels need to adapt to and mitigate climate changes, but solution development requires better information about the environment and vessel operations. Even if ships generate large amounts of potentially useful data, there is a large variety of sources and formats. This lack of standardization makes identification and use of key data challenging and hinders its use in improving operational performance and vessel design. The work described in this paper aims to provide cost-effective tools for systematic data acquisition for fishing vessels, supporting digitalization of the fishing vessel operation and performance monitoring. This digitalization is needed to facilitate the reduction of emissions as a critical environmental problem and industry costs critical for industry sustainability. The resulting monitoring system interfaces onboard systems and sensors, processes the data, and makes it available in a shared onboard data space. From this data space, 209 signals are recorded at different frequencies and uploaded to onshore servers for postprocessing. The collected data describe both ship operation, onboard energy system, and the surrounding environment. Nine of the oceanographic variables have been preselected to be potentially useful for public scientific repositories, such as Copernicus and EMODnet. The data are also used for fuel prediction models, species distribution models, and route optimization models.

NOx Emissions Control Area (NECA) scenario for ports in the North Adriatic Sea.

In response to global warming, the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) set rules of 50% Greenhouse Gas (GHG) reduction by 2050, from 2008 levels. Signatory countries to the IMO's regulation require frequent assessment of the contribution of GHG emissions from shipping calling at their ports or trading in their territorial waters to ensure their compliance with the regulations. This demands a rapid and accurate method to assess shipping's contribution to GHG emissions. Current methodologies for estimating emissions from ships can be described on a scale between bottom-up and top-down methods. Top-down methods provide rapid estimates - primarily based on fuel sales reports - without considering individual vessel details. Therefore, they are less accurate and do not provide a breakdown of emissions by ship types or in specific regions. Bottom-up methodologies are detailed vessel-based estimates; however, they are data and time-demanding. The Ship Emissions Assessment method (SEA) (Topic et al., 2021) fills the gap between bottom-up and top-down methods by providing an innovative hybrid solution for rapid but accurate ship emission estimation. It uses publicly available, cost-effective data sets for emission estimates. The SEA method is capable of estimating ships' emissions in designated areas to understand regulations' effectiveness and provide emission quantification evidence. This research objective was to apply the SEA method to quantify CO2, SOX and NOX exhaust emissions from containerships for the three crucial containership ports: Trieste, Rijeka and Venice, in the North of the Adriatic Sea. The SEA methodology was applied to assess emissions and forecast efficiency in scenarios of different regulatory measures. A reduction in NOx emissions was estimated for the event of the implementation of NECA in all three ports. Results showed that 447.13 tonnes of NOx could be reduced each year in the North Adriatic Sea area around the ports of Rijeka, Trieste and Venice in the event that NECA regulations are stipulated.

Sustained impact of the activities of local crude oil refiners on their host communities in Nigeria.

The local refining of crude oil has become a lucrative but disturbing business in the Niger Delta region of Nigeria. Deep inside the forest of the Niger Delta camps are built and used for the local refining of crude oil. The economic benefits this brings to the refiners are clear, however the host communities are severely hit by the activities of the 'local crude oil refiners'. Farmlands have been destroyed and fishing settlements evacuated as a result of pollution of the rivers and estuaries, with loss of lives and properties. This research investigates the impact of the activities of the local refiners on their host communities' farmlands, rivers and estuaries. A quantitative research method was adopted in this study through the administration of questionnaires to local stakeholders (chiefs, the youth, farmers, traders, fishermen/fisherwomen and residents of affected communities). Quantitative data was collected from three communities in the Niger Delta with local refineries and the data was analysed using descriptive and inferential (Chi Square and Correlation) methods. The study demonstrates the high impact of the activities of the refiners on farmlands and fishing areas of the host communities and makes recommendations to all stakeholders in the upstream and downstream sectors of the petroleum industry. In addition, recommendations are made to the Nigerian government, on ways to address the impact of local refining on host communities.

Attributional life cycle assessment of biofuels for shipping: Addressing alternative geographical locations and cultivation systems.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate a life cycle assessment of straight vegetable oil (SVO) and biodiesel addressing alternative upstream pathways. The pathways are SVO and biodiesel produced in the United Kingdom (UK) using European rapeseed and also, SVO and biodiesel produced in the UK using soybean grain and soybean oil imported from Argentina. Four environmental impact categories have been assessed using the SimaPro (ReCiPe life-cycle impact assessment) method: this includes global warming potential (GWP); acidification; eutrophication and particulate matter. Rapeseed based biofuel had the lowest emission impact in terms of GHG emissions. Significant greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions can result from land use change due to the expansion and cultivation of soybean in Argentina. When land use change is not considered, the soy based biofuel system has the lowest GHG impact with more than 70% GHG emission reduction. The GHG emission at cultivation stage far outweighs the impacts of the other life-cycle stages irrespective of the feedstock used for the biofuel production systems. The use of fertilizers and associated soil emissions are the main contributors. The environmental impacts of biofuel can be reduced by avoiding land use change, improving soil management practices and yield, and also optimizing transportation routes. Effective implementation of options for biofuels production were explored to improve sustainability in shipping.

Difficulties in obtaining representative samples for compliance with the Ballast Water Management Convention.

As implementation of the Ballast Water Convention draws nearer a major challenge is the development of protocols which accurately assess compliance with the D-2 Standard. Many factors affect the accuracy of assessment: e.g. large volume of ballast water, the shape, size and number of ballast tanks and the heterogeneous distribution of organisms within tanks. These factors hinder efforts to obtain samples that truly represent the total ballast water onboard a vessel. A known cell density of Tetraselmis suecica was added to a storage tank and sampled at discharge. The factors holding period, initial cell density and sampling interval affected representativeness. Most samples underestimated cell density, and some tanks with an initial cell density of 100 cells ml(-1) showed <10 cells ml(-1) at discharge, i.e. met the D-2 standard. This highlights difficulties in achieving sample representativeness and when applied to a real ballast tank this will be much harder to achieve.