Corporate Social Responsibility and Shipping Supply Chain Risks

This study aims to investigate whether Corporate Social Responsibility(CSR)activities reduce supply chain disruptions by examining the impact of the Suez Canal obstruction on the Ever Given container ship in March 2021.This study conclude that the more responsible companies have higher returns and are less affected by this event than the less responsible companies;the less responsible companies have lower returns.The companies with better CSR have a lower impact on their supply chains when faced with disruptions in the supply chain.

Review and Analysis: Fate of Arsenic Applied to Canal Shipping Lane Vegetation and United States Military Base Grounds in the Panama Canal Zone

The opening of the Panama Canal in 1913 increased the availability of internationally traded goods and transformed ocean-shipping by shortening travel time between the Atlantic Ocean and Pacific Ocean. The canal sparked the growth of port authorities and increased ship tonnage on both coasts of Panama. Since the construction of the Panama Canal, in the 1910s, pesticides, herbicides and chemicals, including arsenic, have been essential for controlling wetland vegetation, including hyacinth, which blocked rivers, lakes, and the canal as well as managing mosquitoes. Pesticides and chemicals flowed into Lake Gatun (reservoir) either attached to sediment or in solution during the monsoon season. Lake Gatun was the drinking water source for most of the people living in the Panama Canal Zone. The United States military base commanders had the ability to order and use cacodylic acid (arsenic based) from the Naval Depot Supply Federal and Stock Catalog and the later Federal Supply Catalog on the military base grounds in the Panama Canal Zone. Cacodylic acid was shipped to Panama Canal Zone ports, including Balboa and Cristobal, and distributed to the military bases by rail or truck. The objective of this study is to determine the fate of arsenic: 1) applied between 1914 and 1935 to Panama Canal shipping lane hyacinth and other wetland vegetation and 2) cacodylic acid (arsenic) sprayed from 1948 to 1999 on the US military base grounds in the Panama Canal Zone.

Unmanned Ship Identification Based on Improved YOLOv8s Algorithm

Aiming at defects such as low contrast in infrared ship images,uneven distribution of ship size,and lack of texture details,which will lead to unmanned ship leakage misdetection and slow detection,this paper proposes an infrared ship detection model based on the improved YOLOv8 algorithm(R_YOLO).The algorithm incorporates the Efficient Multi-Scale Attention mechanism(EMA),the efficient Reparameterized Generalized-feature extraction module(CSPStage),the small target detection header,the Repulsion Loss function,and the context aggregation block(CABlock),which are designed to improve the model’s ability to detect targets at multiple scales and the speed of model inference.The algorithm is validated in detail on two vessel datasets.The comprehensive experimental results demonstrate that,in the infrared dataset,the YOLOv8s algorithm exhibits improvements in various performance metrics.Specifically,compared to the baseline algorithm,there is a 3.1%increase in mean average precision at a threshold of 0.5(mAP(0.5)),a 5.4%increase in recall rate,and a 2.2%increase in mAP(0.5:0.95).Simultaneously,while less than 5 times parameters,the mAP(0.5)and frames per second(FPS)exhibit an increase of 1.7%and more than 3 times,respectively,compared to the CAA_YOLO algorithm.Finally,the evaluation indexes on the visible light data set have shown an average improvement of 4.5%.

Dilemma and Solutions of Greenhouse Gas Emission Reduction of International Shipping

How to build an international maritime GHG(greenhouse gas)emission reduction cooperation mechanism is an important international issue at present.Firstly,we describe the current situation of maritime transport GHG emission reduction and analyze the problems that still exist in international maritime transport emission reduction from four aspects:political,economic,legal and technical.For example,geopolitical aggravation hinders the solution of the FOC(Flag of Convenience)issue;maritime emissions are not included in the carbon emission trading system;the synergy of maritime emission reduction principles under the IMO(International Maritime Organization)framework and the technical level of maritime emission reduction needs to be improved.The motivation and essence of the divergent international actions on maritime emission reduction are discussed.Finally,it is proposed to implement the“true linkage principle”to solve the problem of FOCs;to promote the development of regional carbon markets and link them to the international maritime carbon emission trading market economically;to implement the CBDR(the common but differentiated responsibilities)principle legally to promote the international emission reduction work in an orderly manner;and the technical innovation of ships and increase the technical support.

Efficient Ship:A Hybrid Deep Learning Framework for Ship Detection in the River

Optical image-based ship detection can ensure the safety of ships and promote the orderly management of ships in offshore waters.Current deep learning researches on optical image-based ship detection mainly focus on improving one-stage detectors for real-time ship detection but sacrifices the accuracy of detection.To solve this problem,we present a hybrid ship detection framework which is named EfficientShip in this paper.The core parts of the EfficientShip are DLA-backboned object location(DBOL)and CascadeRCNN-guided object classification(CROC).The DBOL is responsible for finding potential ship objects,and the CROC is used to categorize the potential ship objects.We also design a pixel-spatial-level data augmentation(PSDA)to reduce the risk of detection model overfitting.We compare the proposed EfficientShip with state-of-the-art(SOTA)literature on a ship detection dataset called Seaships.Experiments show our ship detection framework achieves a result of 99.63%(mAP)at 45 fps,which is much better than 8 SOTA approaches on detection accuracy and can also meet the requirements of real-time application scenarios.

Fine-Grained Ship Recognition Based on Visible and Near-Infrared Multimodal Remote Sensing Images: Dataset,Methodology and Evaluation

Fine-grained recognition of ships based on remote sensing images is crucial to safeguarding maritime rights and interests and maintaining national security.Currently,with the emergence of massive high-resolution multi-modality images,the use of multi-modality images for fine-grained recognition has become a promising technology.Fine-grained recognition of multi-modality images imposes higher requirements on the dataset samples.The key to the problem is how to extract and fuse the complementary features of multi-modality images to obtain more discriminative fusion features.The attention mechanism helps the model to pinpoint the key information in the image,resulting in a significant improvement in the model’s performance.In this paper,a dataset for fine-grained recognition of ships based on visible and near-infrared multi-modality remote sensing images has been proposed first,named Dataset for Multimodal Fine-grained Recognition of Ships(DMFGRS).It includes 1,635 pairs of visible and near-infrared remote sensing images divided into 20 categories,collated from digital orthophotos model provided by commercial remote sensing satellites.DMFGRS provides two types of annotation format files,as well as segmentation mask images corresponding to the ship targets.Then,a Multimodal Information Cross-Enhancement Network(MICE-Net)fusing features of visible and near-infrared remote sensing images,has been proposed.In the network,a dual-branch feature extraction and fusion module has been designed to obtain more expressive features.The Feature Cross Enhancement Module(FCEM)achieves the fusion enhancement of the two modal features by making the channel attention and spatial attention work cross-functionally on the feature map.A benchmark is established by evaluating state-of-the-art object recognition algorithms on DMFGRS.MICE-Net conducted experiments on DMFGRS,and the precision,recall,mAP0.5 and mAP0.5:0.95 reached 87%,77.1%,83.8%and 63.9%,respectively.Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed MICE-Net has more excellent performance on DMFGRS.Built on lightweight network YOLO,the model has excellent generalizability,and thus has good potential for application in real-life scenarios.

A Time-Domain Numerical Simulation for Free Motion Responses of Two Ships Advancing in Head Waves

The constant panel method within the framework of potential flow theory in the time domain is developed for solving the hydrodynamic interactions between two parallel ships with forward speed.When solving problems within a time domain framework,the free water surface needs to simultaneously satisfy both the kinematic and dynamic boundary conditions of the free water surface.This provides conditions for adding artificial damping layers.Using the Runge−Kutta method to solve equations related to time.An upwind differential scheme is used in the present method to deal with the convection terms on the free surface to prevent waves upstream.Through the comparison with the available experimental data and other numerical methods,the present method is proved to have good mesh convergence,and satisfactory results can be obtained.The constant panel method is applied to calculate the hydrodynamic interaction responses of two parallel ships advancing in head waves.Numerical simulations are conducted on the effects of forward speed,different longitudinal and lateral distances on the motion response of two modified Wigley ships in head waves.Then further investigations are conducted on the effects of different ship types on the motion response.

Improved Scatter Search Algorithm for Multi-skilled Personnel Scheduling of Ship Block Painting

This paper focuses on the optimization method for multi-skilled painting personnel scheduling.The budget working time analysis is carried out considering the influence of operating area,difficulty of spraying area,multi-skilled workers,and worker’s efficiency,then a mathematical model is established to minimize the completion time. The constraints of task priority,paint preparation,pump management,and neighbor avoidance in the ship block painting production are considered. Based on this model,an improved scatter search(ISS)algorithm is designed,and the hybrid approximate dynamic programming(ADP)algorithm is used to improve search efficiency. In addition,the two solution combination methods of path-relinking and task sequence combination are used to enhance the search breadth and depth. The numerical experimental results show that ISS has a significant advantage in solving efficiency compared with the solver in small scale instances;Compared with the scatter search algorithm and genetic algorithm,ISS can stably improve the solution quality. Verified by the production example,ISS effectively shortens the total completion time of the production,which is suitable for scheduling problems in the actual painting production of the shipyard.

Sending The King Ship, A Tradition Connecting Two Peoples

“The sky is dark,and it is about to rain,”goes a lyric from China’s coastal Minnan(southern Fujian)region.“The king ship is leaving the bay,papa is going out to sea,and mama is sending the ship off.May it bring us wealth,food,and the gods’protection.”The 600-year-old custom is called Ong Chun,Wangchuan,Wangkang,or“Sending the King Ship.”

Ship recognition based on HRRP via multi-scale sparse preserving method

In order to extract the richer feature information of ship targets from sea clutter, and address the high dimensional data problem, a method termed as multi-scale fusion kernel sparse preserving projection(MSFKSPP) based on the maximum margin criterion(MMC) is proposed for recognizing the class of ship targets utilizing the high-resolution range profile(HRRP). Multi-scale fusion is introduced to capture the local and detailed information in small-scale features, and the global and contour information in large-scale features, offering help to extract the edge information from sea clutter and further improving the target recognition accuracy. The proposed method can maximally preserve the multi-scale fusion sparse of data and maximize the class separability in the reduced dimensionality by reproducing kernel Hilbert space. Experimental results on the measured radar data show that the proposed method can effectively extract the features of ship target from sea clutter, further reduce the feature dimensionality, and improve target recognition performance.

Novel method for extraction of ship target with overlaps in SAR image via EM algorithm

The quality of synthetic aperture radar(SAR)image degrades in the case of multiple imaging projection planes(IPPs)and multiple overlapping ship targets,and then the performance of target classification and recognition can be influenced.For addressing this issue,a method for extracting ship targets with overlaps via the expectation maximization(EM)algorithm is pro-posed.First,the scatterers of ship targets are obtained via the target detection technique.Then,the EM algorithm is applied to extract the scatterers of a single ship target with a single IPP.Afterwards,a novel image amplitude estimation approach is pro-posed,with which the radar image of a single target with a sin-gle IPP can be generated.The proposed method can accom-plish IPP selection and targets separation in the image domain,which can improve the image quality and reserve the target information most possibly.Results of simulated and real mea-sured data demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

欧盟AUTOSHIP项目

欧洲水域自主航运倡议项目(Autonomous Shipping Initiative for European Waters,AUTOSHIP项目)由意大利Ciaotech S.r.l.公司牵头,联合康士伯等其他欧洲国家合作伙伴共同完成。该项目通过在不同环境下运营的两艘不同类型船舶上安装和测试自主航行设施,加速新一代自主航行船舶发展,并为欧盟实现船舶自主航行制定商业化路线图。

多个零售商竞争下的Drop-shipping供应链协调

D rop-sh ipp ing是互联网上广泛采用的一种商业模式。Netessine(2004)对这种模式的供应链进行了研究,分析了多周期供应商和零售商之间的相互作用。本文扩展了Netessine的研究,分析了一对多的D rop-sh ip-p ing供应链,零售商之间存在促销竞争,讨论了Nash均衡的存在性和唯一性。研究发现在一对多的情况下,Netessine设计的合同的局限性。数值分析发现保持一定数量的零售商对供应商有好外,但零售商太多也会存在弊端。

信息不对称下供应商在Drop-shipping供应链中的决策

在电子商务背景下,以Drop-shipping模式下的一个两级供应链为研究对象,着重探索供应商的经营决策。在这种模式下,电子零售商主要负责产品的宣传和销售工作,并将订单传递给供应商,由供应商完成生产和配送。但是由于电子商务的复杂性,供应商并不能对零售商的广告信息进行全面掌握,故供应商需要考虑如何通过制定批发价格来激励零售商的广告行为。基于Stackelberg博弈模型,研究供应商(领导者)在面临零售商(跟随者)不对称的广告信息时如何制定产品的批发价格和配送水平,以及电子零售商的广告策略。最后,通过仿真模拟的方法探讨了各决策主体的利润变化规律以及供应链的协调和优化策略。

Studies on Tomato Seedling Quality Indices Under Simulated Shipping and Storage Conditions

Indices of the tomato seedling quality maintenance level after production before field planting were studied through simulated experiments, small—scale operation, indoor analyses and measurements, and field observation. The results showed that under simulated shipping and storage conditions, seedling quality change following different durations (days) of shipping and storage was correlated significantly or even very significantly with certain physiological and morphological indices. With various measured indices following different periods of shipping and storage treatment subjected to multinomial successive regressive correlation analysis, the principal factors influencing seedling quality maintenance level are identified to be chlorophyll content →dry short weight → leaf freshness index in order of their importance. Significance analysis with multinomial fitted equation indicated that correlations between any one of above three factors and the growth index after field planting reached very significant difference level.

International code for ships operating in polar waters:challenges to polar shipping safety rules in China

Abstract With the sea-ice diminishing steadily in the polar regions, there has been growing interest in new transit routes through polar waters using cost-effective transportation. Among the international regulators over polar shipping, the International Maritime Organization （IMO） is the leading body concerned with drafting marine safety and environmental protection rules. The mandatory Polar Code （International Code for Ships Operating in Polar Waters） adopted by the IMO signals the consensus among maritime states to apply compulsory rules to vessels operating in Arctic and Antarctic waters. As the standing member of the IMO and a major global shipping power, China is preparing to adopt national regulatory standards to develop an adequate vessel infrastructure and crew training system. Proceeding in parallel with the developing polar shipping industry, China will also move ahead in comprehensive collaboration with the Nordic states regarding polar issues.

Development Experience of Foreign Green Shipping and Its Enlightenment to China

Based on analysis of green shipping practices of foreign ships manufacturers, ocean carriers ad port countries, their advanced experience was summarized, and its enlightenment to China＇s ＂green shipping＂ was analyzed to realize China＇s dream of becoming ＂ a strong shipping country＂ eady.

MMShip:中分辨率多光谱卫星图像船舶数据集

针对现有遥感船舶数据集均为裁剪后的图像,用数据集训练的检测算法直接运用于卫星图像原始尺度时检测效果较差的问题,建立了可见光和近红外4个波段的多光谱卫星船舶数据集MMShip,数据集同时包含卫星图像的原始尺度数据和切割后的小尺度船舶数据。本数据集引入多波段信息,弥补现有数据集多为可见光图像,而可见光容易受到光照条件等影响的缺点。在全球海域内下载云量低于3的Sentinel-2卫星图像,进行大气校正后只选取10 m分辨率的红绿蓝和近红外4个波段,以景为单位筛选出包含有船舶的图像。把筛选后的图像按无重叠的方式切分为512×512,剔除其中不包含船舶目标的图像。然后,使用LabelImage软件对小尺度数据进行了水平框标注,再将标注数据反推至原始尺度得到原始尺度下的标注信息。最后,利用几种典型的检测算法在切割后的MMShip小尺度数据集上进行了可见光、近红外、多光谱对比实验。构建了一个涵盖不同场景的多光谱卫星船舶目标数据集,包含497景原始尺度标注数据和裁剪后的5 016组船舶目标图像。对比实验验证了近红外波段信息的补充有助于提高船舶目标检测算法的精度。多光谱船舶数据集MMShip可用于卫星图像尺度和普通图像尺度的多光谱船舶目标检测算法研究。

Using a skillful statistical model to predict September sea ice covering Arctic shipping routes

The rapid decrease in Arctic sea ice cover and thickness not only has a linkage with extreme weather in the midlatitudes but also brings more opportunities for Arctic shipping routes and polar resource exploration,both of which motivate us to further understand causes of sea-ice variations and to obtain more accurate estimates of seaice cover in the future.Here,a novel data-driven method,the causal effect networks algorithm,is applied to identify the direct precursors of September sea-ice extent covering the Northern Sea Route and Transpolar Sea Route at different lead times so that statistical models can be constructed for sea-ice prediction.The whole study area was also divided into two parts:the northern region covered by multiyear ice and the southern region covered by seasonal ice.The forecast models of September sea-ice extent in the whole study area(TSIE)and southern region(SSIE)at lead times of 1–4 months can explain over 65%and 79%of the variances,respectively,but the forecast skill of sea-ice extent in the northern region(NSIE)is limited at a lead time of 1 month.At lead times of 1–4 months,local sea-ice concentration and sea-ice thickness have a larger influence on September TSIE and SSIE than other teleconnection factors.When the lead time is more than 4 months,the surface meridional wind anomaly from northern Europe in the preceding autumn or early winter is dominant for September TSIE variations but is comparable to thermodynamic factors for NSIE and SSIE.We suggest that this study provides a complementary approach for predicting regional sea ice and is helpful in evaluating and improving climate models.

Impact of Shipping Distance on Online Retailers' Sales:A Case Study of Maiyang on Tmall

Many studies have qualitatively explained that information and communication technology(ICT) has loosened the restrictions of distance and space on retailers' sales. Few empirical studies, however, have explored the impact of shipping distance on online retailers' sales. This study examined the Maiyang(M-Y) store on Tmall in China as a case study to investigate the relationship between shipping distance and sales. The results showed that sales volume in 2014 at the county level did not strictly obey the distance decay law. The shipped distance of high-priced commodities may not be much longer than that of low-priced commodities. Within the scope of investigation, the relationships between income, cost, and net profit curves do not follow central place theory. Goods have neither thresholds nor ranges. The key factor in the spatial discrepancy of sales is the size of market. The impact of shipping distance on sales is not as strong as that of traditional retailers in Information Era.