Professor Ulla Tapaninen's blog
Four years ago, our research group was invited to participate in an EU-funded research project to develop an unmanned flying ship, a ground effect ship. A wing-in-ground-effect or winged ship, WIG, is a vehicle that looks like an airplane and flies a few meters above the ground or sea. Many of you probably remember the … Continue reading Will the ships of the future fly?
The Finnish economy is highly dependent on world trade. Due to country’s geographical location, maritime transport is the most significant form of transport – especially now that trade with Russia has decreased significantly. Finland’s foreign trade in 2025 was 233 billion euros, of which almost exactly half were imports and half were exports. Of these … Continue reading What did Finland’s maritime transport volumes look like in 2025?
Should a high-speed train be built to Turku? What about a bridge from Turku to Stockholm? Or a train ferry to Tallinn? Questions like this are raised in the public, and expert reports on the economic profitability of transport connections seem to be contradictory. How can we understaind all this? Over the decades in my … Continue reading About the economic assessment of transport connections
Thirty years ago, the internet gradually took over our daily lives. Few of us could have foreseen the current triumph of e-commerce and the complete shift of communication between authorities and friends to internet. However, shipping was lagging behind other industries in the development, because for a long time it was not possible to connect … Continue reading We can bring happy times to Estonian maritime affairs
A recent doctoral dissertation on the digitalization of passenger and car ferry ports raises more questions than it answers. At the same time, it shows that the digitalization transformation of ports is only just beginning, if at all. Last week, doctoral candidate Yiran Chen Zhou's dissertation was examined at Åbo Akademi. The thesis examined how … Continue reading The digital transformation of passenger and car ferry ports is just beginning
The one that controls the world's maritime transport flows controls the world. For hundreds of years this phrase has guided Columbus, the East India Company as well as Donald Trump. Almost every day we read about the tariffs imposed by Trump, the Russian shadow fleet, or the crises in the Strait of Hormuz, all of … Continue reading When geopolitical risks increase, the world reduces its dependence on oil
- What can we learn from the United States and Ukraine? Finland's foreign trade is completely dependent on its maritime transport. Although the share of services in our foreign trade is constantly increasing, almost all of our foreign trade goods travel by sea. However, the maritime operating environment is not stable. The COVID-19 pandemic, the … Continue reading A competitive maritime cluster is the best security of supply
Restrictions increase research and development while strengthening the competitiveness of maritime cluster. In our recently published study, we showed that the strict targets set by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) to reduce emissions in Particularly Sensitive Sea Areas and Emission Control Areas (PSSA and ECA) have increased scientific research on shipping in these areas – … Continue reading Can strict regulations and international competition boost shipping industry?
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