Professor Ulla Tapaninen's blog
Hormuz, the Red Sea, the Black Sea and the Baltic are exposing the gap between maritime law and maritime reality, write Dr Deniece Aiken and Professor Ulla Tapaninen. The crises in Hormuz, the Red Sea, the Black Sea and the Baltic are not only tests of shipping resilience. They are tests of whether international maritime … Continue reading When the sea stops being free
If the current situation continues for a long time, is it possible that in the future free navigation of the seas will be agreed on regionally or in bilateral agreements between countries? Hopefully not. It is clear to those of us working in the shipping industry that our current prosperity is based on world trade. … Continue reading Is the time for free navigation over?
The Economist, one of the world’s leading business magazines, wrote a few weeks ago: “Whatever happens in the Strait of Hormuz, energy markets have been changed for ever”. The Strait of Hormuz separates the Persian Gulf from the Indian Ocean. In The Persian Gulf are located the export ports of major oil and gas exporters … Continue reading The Strait of Hormuz Blockade Has Caused a Global Energy Crisis
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
Tales of Talsinki 