Maritime Policy & Management

The importance of major rivers in the world is growing multi-dimensional, e.g., from cultural, social, economic, and environmental perspectives. In particular, river-sea, river-inland transportation networks, and green logistics are focal issues along the rivers, including the Mekong River, the longest river in Southeast Asia. Although inland waterways and river ports have great potential to become a driving force for economic and social development as eco-friendly means of transport and regional development hubs, they are unable to fully realize their potential due to limitations in infrastructure, professional workforce, and operation systems. Digitalization is very closely related to establishing seamless and smooth flows of cargo and ships, decarbonizing the maritime industry, and improving the efficiency of shipping and port services.

In this context, the Special Issue of Maritime Policy & Management on “Sustainable Waterway Transport Development: Digitalization and Decarbonization” is arranged in collaboration with the conferences organized by the Yangtze River Research and Innovation Belt (Y-RIB) established in 2018 and UN ESCAP to deal with focal issues in the waterway transport sector, including river shipping (Conference website: https://www.y-rib.org/). This SI will contribute to sharing knowledge and experiences of academics, experts, business stakeholders, and policy-makers in inland water, logistics shipping, and port fields and discussing their implications for promoting smart and sustainable waterway transport among them.

The SI welcomes key topics as listed below, but not limited to:

• River-sea transportation network
• Green logistics between river-inland transport network
• Decarbonization of waterway transport
• River ship with renewable energy
• Safety in waterway transport
• Waterway port development model
• Smart port development
• Policy development of river shipping
• Single-window system at river cross-borders
• Ecosystem for river-city interface
• Sustainability of waterway transport
• Integrated inland waterway and multimodal land transport systems
• River shipping and operation case studies: Yangtze River, Mekong River, etc.
• Optimization model of river-sea intermodal transportation
• Artificial intelligence in maritime transportation
• Current state-of-the-art fundamental and applied research methodology for waterway transport

No specific instructions. We will follow the general guidelines of the Maritime Policy & Management.

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