Ports Opening for Seafarer Change during the COVID-19: Models and Applications

Yu Guo, Ran Yan, Yiwei Wu and Hans Wang
Additional contact information
Yu Guo: Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Ran Yan: Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Yiwei Wu: Department of Logistics and Maritime Studies, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong
Hans Wang: Faculty of Business, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong

Sustainability, 2022, vol. 14, issue 5, 1-9

Abstract: Countries around the world have tightened their border controls in response to the spread of COVID-19. Consequently, seafarers are prohibited from boarding or leaving ships at most ports, with few exceptions. This situation means that seafarers are highly likely to serve onboard vessels beyond their contracted shifts. Most seafarers are prone to depression because they have to spend long periods at sea away from family and friends, and, thus, banning crew changes will put their mental health further at risk. This will increase the likelihood of maritime accidents, thus jeopardizing global supply chains and ultimately exacerbating current hardships. To tackle this emergency, the International Maritime Organization and the European Commission have called on governments to coordinate efforts to designate ports for crew changes during the pandemic. This study aims to solve the crew change problem by using an integer linear programming model. In the sensitivity analysis section, we find that the number of opening ports for crew changes and the cost of crew changes decrease when the cost of opening ports increases. The results show governments will not invest in opening more ports when the cost of opening ports increases. However, the penalty increases when the number of open ports decreases, and the cost of opening ports increases. As the number of crew changes is decreasing, this leads to the penalty increasing, when the number of open ports decreases.

Keywords: shipping; COVID-19; seafarer change; ILP model; penalty (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/5/2908/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/14/5/2908/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:14:y:2022:i:5:p:2908-:d:762475

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().