Conference ‘Accelerating Transitions’ #IAME2021
Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), together with Delft University of Technology (TU-Delft) organizes the 2021 IAME conference in one of the main gateways to Europe, under the name Accelerating Transitions. The aim of the conference is to bring together experts in all aspects of ports and maritime research, from all parts of the world and to stimulate the exchange of new ideas, relevant insights and cutting-edge research results.
Accelerating Transitions!
We are all aware that the port and maritime shipping industry is facing a major transition enforced by climate change and its consequent impacts and measures. But complying with new, environmental rules of engagement is just one major transition this industry is facing. On the geopolitical front, new realities are also taking shape. On the one hand, there is the America First-doctrine initiated by President Trump that is shaking up international affairs and dismantling the same open and rules-based global trading regime that America itself so successfully has shaped and defended over the last 75 years. On the other hand, there is China that with its ambitious Belt Road Initiative is assertively positioning itself as the champion of global trade. Without taking any moral or political position, geopolitics is re-shaping global trade.
Furthermore, in shipping, the digital revolution is just getting started: platforms and applications are disrupting industries and business models, just in the way the introduction of ‘the box’ did. These big data and tools provide enormous opportunities for modelling and analytics in support of optimization and scientific inquiry. Moreover, we should remain critical and curious as an academic community and have the courage to address thoughts, hypotheses and lines of investigation that questions dominant paradigms. Digitization and interconnectedness come with new vulnerabilities, see for example the Stuxnet –virus and cybersecurity threats. Robotics, algorithms and autonomous systems place even more emphasis on the human-AI interface than ever before, both in terms of skills and application as in ethics and design. And Schumpeterian creative destruction comes at a cost, in terms of the potential loss of conventional jobs (seafarers, dockworkers, warehouse workers).
In many ways, the transitions the maritime industry face are part of wider systemic changes in the world economy. It is not a choice or an option, it is happening, unfolding and in many ways self-organizing. The challenge for the academic community is to stay on track with these transitions, facilitate accelerations where needed, but with one hand on the gear that allows for second-opinion, calibration and validation. That is what we want to bring to the core of this years’ IAME conference while not leaving the more fundamental and ever-relevant research topics aside.
The program runs over four days and covers academic full paper sessions where research results can be discussed and extended abstract sessions as a basis for reflection and discussion that enables further development of the research work. There will also be special sessions, tackling actual topics that gain interest from a group of researchers that can be discussed and deepened, also in interaction with the industry. And we specifically plan for science-industry interactions aiming at agenda-setting for relevant research and joint development of new insights. And of course, there will be an attractive social program and plenty of opportunity for informal interactions and networking.
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