### SSS-CA: State of the Art Study

ŠNTUA, 1996

There has been an explosive growth in shortsea shipping related research during the last six years. In this period there have been about 80 papers presented at the three European Research Roundtable on Shortsea Shipping conferences to date (1992, 1994, and 1996). In addition, the three FAST international conferences on fast waterborne transport (1991, 1993, and 1995) presented close to 300 papers, of which about 70 directly focus on shortsea shipping. Various projects, national and international, have been also initiated in this area. In the context of the 4th Framework Programme, the European Commission/ Directorate General for Transport (DGVII) has launched in early 1996 several shared cost projects, as well as a concerted action explicitly targeted to shortsea shipping. Other directorates such as DGXII and DGXIII have also launched related projects in early 1996.

In view of such a boom of research activity, it became imperative to critically survey such work, and also make a taxonomy of it, so that all this work is sorted out, and the baseline for further research becomes clear. Failure to do this would inevitably result in duplication of effort, gaps in research, lack of vision on what is needed, and other negative ramifications. The purpose of State of the Art Study on SSS has been to carry out a critical survey and taxonomy of such work. The survey has involved a European-wide solicitation of input on related work, mainly in the context of the Concerted Action on SSS, but also from other sources.

The State of the Art Study was completed in July 1996 by NTUA and is in two volumes: Volume I is the main report and Volume II is an appendix containing detailed information on the collected material. A computerized database and software tool were also developed to assist in information entry, update, search and retrieval.

The entire database can now be accessed on the Internet. A "search engine" has been developed to that effect, and has been installed on one of the two NTUA Maritime Transport web servers. To use the search engine, please use this link.

Without claiming that the contents of the State of the Art Study are encyclopedic, or that each and every piece of material collected has been reviewed in depth, we can at least claim that the 441 entries catalogued represent an unprecedented compilation of material in this area. Perhaps the most important trend identified within this vast collection the material is a significant degree of "fragmentation" of R&D effort in the SSS field, in the sense that problems that are methodologically similar in many contexts have been typically addressed in isolation. The most obvious consequence of this fragmentation is that the impact of R&D efforts to serve the real needs of European SSS has been so far limited. Commission-sponsored activities such as the Concerted Action on SSS, the SSS Roundtable Conferences, the collaborative R&D projects under way, and other related activities are expected to alleviate this situation in the future.

Both volumes of the State of the Art Study can be downloaded by remotely accessing the NTUA ftp site as follows:

1) ftp ftp.deslab.nava.ntua.gr (connect to NTUA's ftp site).
2) login as anonymous with your user ID as password.
3) cd pub/mtrans/sss_ca (go to appropriate directory).
4) get volume1.doc (download Volume I, a Word 6.0 document).
5) get volume2.doc (download Volume II, a Word 6.0 document).
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