Evi Plomaritou

Maritime transportation, a traditionally polluting sector, is engaged in sustainable innovation; advanced detection of marine pollution incidents can help control improvements in this sector. However, coastal and marine environmental governance is increasingly constrained by fragmented monitoring architectures in which environmental, operational, and regulatory datasets remain distributed across institutions and jurisdictions. Comprehensive governance mechanisms that cross the sea–land continuum are limited. Public authorities, port administrations, research institutes, and private operators independently monitor marine pollution, vessel movements, coastal pressures, and urban and ecological risks; however, these data streams remain siloed across organizational, sectoral, and jurisdictional boundaries. The absence of interoperability, real-time exchange, and coordinated analytics generates a gap between monitoring capacity and regulatory effectiveness, resulting in delayed detection of multi-risks, such as pollution incidents. Weak governance and assignment of responsibility and largely reactive enforcement practices further reinforce the problem. Anticipatory interventions are needed to improve coastal and marine sustainability. This paper examines the EMMERA (East Med Cross-border Marine Environmental Risk Assessment through E-Platform Integrated Data Management) platform established by three port authorities as a data-centric intervention designed to address some of these structural limitations. Implemented in port and coastal environments in Cyprus, Greece, and Israel, EMMERA integrates heterogeneous static and dynamic data sources—including satellite observations, administrative records, vessel information, and drone-based monitoring—into a unified operational framework accessible to competent authorities. Through data fusion, cross-validation, and automated anomaly detection combined with targeted drone verification, the platform aims to transform fragmented monitoring streams into coherent, actionable environmental intelligence, strengthening the evidentiary basis for regulatory intervention. The paper presents the platform design and provides a baseline assessment. It argues that EMMERA’s primary contribution lies not in the introduction of additional monitoring tools, but in enabling more effective coastal and marine environmental governance through integrated data infrastructures. EMMERA is proposed as a governance-oriented integrated data infrastructure whose anticipated contribution lies in improving institutional interoperability, risk visibility, and evidence generation for environmental oversight, even as operational effectiveness will require future evaluation following sustained deployment. More broadly, the paper proposes that integrated data architectures can recalibrate environmental governance, shifting emphasis from post hoc documentation toward anticipatory, coordinated, and performance-oriented regulatory practices.

Previous research offering a comprehensive overview of digitalisation in maritime transport is limited. In this paper, the authors use several cases to examine digitalisation’s role in the chartering business. The applications of innovative digitalisation to enhance efficiency in the shipping business are presented analytically. Special emphasis is given to the role of the e-bill of lading in the bulk and liner markets. The advantages, disadvantages and legal barriers of the e-bill of lading are examined thoroughly for both markets (bulk and liner markets). The research follows a qualitative case study approach. It shows that although digital technologies offer important advantages in the chartering business, many legal barriers still need to be overcome. The findings fill the gap in the literature and assist maritime professionals and shipping companies in understanding the necessity of digitalisation in chartering business.

This chapter discusses the substantial subject of shipbroking and chartering practice; namely the chartering negotiations. Some examples of special chartering routines are mentioned, while finally, the principles of chartering negotiations are introduced as guided by the Baltic Code of Ethics and Market Practice. A charterparty is a contract which is negotiated in a free market, subject only to the laws of supply and demand. The practice of negotiation in dry cargo and tanker chartering is similar, the main difference being the speed with which the offers and counter-offers are exchanged. The chartering negotiations in tanker market are speedier compared to those in the dry market. The investigation stage commences when a charterer directly or through a broker enters the market with an order. Furthermore, the charterer can compare the freight quoted with his own opinion about the proper freight level and can also compare it with suggestions made by other owners.