Estimating pollutant emissions from sea cruise in the Adriatic Sea in 2022 and regulatory measures

Climate change and the fight against global warming have become the central issue of our contemporary society occupying an important place in various sectors. New regulations have been implemented like SECA areas in the North Sea or the reduction of fuel-emissions for all ships (International Maritime Organisation (IMO), MARPOL Convention annex VI). This paper proposes an analysis based on Automatic Identification System (AIS) signals to study polluting emissions from cruise ships in the Adriatic Sea in 2022.The AIS is a tracking system used on ships to provide information on surrounding traffic situation and supplements marine radar for safety and security uses. Based on an AIS database, combined with a ship database, this approach aims to provide an effective tool for assessing ship emissions and for estimating them. We applied a methodology based on the energy consumption of the ships, as well as their routing and position. As a result, we obtain the estimation by type of pollutant (CO2, PM, SOX, NOX, N2O, CH4, …) by ships and by ports. The second part of our paper estimates the impact of setting up an ECA zone on ship emissions in the Adriatic. This model can be used to assess the impact of public policy decisions on port development or the introduction of new regulations to reduce pollutant emissions.