Project description
Exploring new methods to keep container shipping safe
Global supply chains hinge on shipping containers. To ensure the transport of supplies to manufacturers and finished goods to distributors, it is important to address issues related to resilience and sustainability of container supply chains (CSCs). The EU-funded TRUST project will explore these issues in terms of risks arising from climate change, cyberattacks and emerging technologies (autonomous ships). Specifically, the project will explore and quantify climate risks, forecast security risks and advance holistic safety approaches with the use of new techniques and environments. Risk assessments will take into consideration historical accidents and stakeholders’ perceptions. The findings will assist with the development of methodologies of CSCs that can withstand risky situations.
Objective
Risk research represents an important challenge for the resilience and sustainability of container supply chains (CSCs). Its foci are being expanded from classical safety, through security to climate adaptation. Addressing such risks simultaneously requires integration across disciplines and research methodologies. The research community currently lacks a critical understanding of non-classical CSC risks arising from climate change, security threats (e.g. cyber-attacks), and emerging technologies (e.g. autonomous ships) in the digital industrial era. Through ground-breaking and interdisciplinary research, TRUST aims to address the key research question regarding which kinds of risk schemes can harness science and technology most effectively to achieve long-term resilient and sustainable CSC systems. The findings will shift the traditional risk management practice paradigm and deliver a novel programme that will enable the quantification, integration and communication of risk information from different areas and facilitate the movement of risk culture from a reactive single-dimensional scheme towards a proactive multi-dimensional regime. The programme divides into three integrated domains: 1) exploring and quantifying climate risks to rationalise adaptation planning; 2) forecasting security risks to address the most commanding threats in CSCs; and 3) advancing holistic safety approaches for CSCs involving new techniques and environments (e.g. Arctic shipping). The combination of objective (from historical accidents) and subjective (from stakeholders’ perceptions) risk data will inform the exploitation of the advances in new safety and security risk models to enhance climate risk and adaptation studies in a complementary way. The work will address the significant methodological issues associated with resilience and sustainability sciences and advance the state-of-the-art to a point where robust CSCs can be developed and realised, even under deep uncertainty.
Fields of science
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringvehicle engineeringautomotive engineeringautonomous vehicles
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesenvironmental sciencessustainability sciences
- engineering and technologyenvironmental engineeringecosystem-based managementclimate change adaptation
- social sciencessociologygovernancecrisis management
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and management
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
ERC-COG - Consolidator GrantHost institution
L3 5UX Liverpool
United Kingdom