Study of cargo flows in the Gulf of Finland in emergency situations

Closed

The Baltic Sea Region (BSR includes: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, northwest Russia and northern Germany) is an area of high economic growth. The region attracts foreign direct investments and it offers challenging but positive economic perspectives. The dominant mode of transport in BSR is sea (about 76% of trade in BSR states) and only 24% come by other means of transport. In addition to their own import and export, Finnish and Estonian ports handle a major share of the Russian transit traffic. Finnish ports have mainly concentrated on container import to Russia, Estonian ports carry a major share of the oil export from Russia. There exists no study on how the very large maritime volumes could be handled when the operational environment radically changes e.g., a port or several ports or sea routes would be closed down due to e.g., an economic crisis or an environmental hazard. The hypothesis behind this project is that analyzing the present and future business environment by combining the information of cargo flows, actors, infrastructure, alternative routes, the co-operation between the ports and cargo flows through the alternative routes e.g., via roads and railroads through the Estonia, Southeast Finland, preparation can be started even before the emergency situation. The cargo flows in the Gulf of Finland will be examined from two different points of views. Firstly, the present operational environment will be examined and evaluated from the continuous and sustainable growth point of view. Secondly, the future operational environment will be explored to reveal the potential discontinuities and their effects on the development of the cargo flows in the region. Finally, the alternative future development paths of the regional industry and transportation and their effects on local as well as national business will be analyzed. The results will reveal the optional strategic and operational actions for the business actors and the authorities to meet the future challenges of the changing business environment and requirements of the cargo industry in the radically changing situations. We e.g., analyze the capacity and potential for alternative routing in Finland and Estonia and estimate changes in traffic pattern, size of vessels, railway tunnel between Helsinki and Tallinn and finally, create suggestions for the actors.

Medium