Sustainability education, a multidisciplinary field demanding a profound understanding of intricate scientific, engineering, social and economic systems, necessitates innovative approaches. Laboratory experimentation plays a pivotal role in engineering and scientific education. The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic heightened the importance of remote learning and home-based study in pedagogical practices. However, engineering education has faced challenges in adapting to novel teaching methodologies. A significant challenge during lockdowns was the effective delivery of laboratory experiences in virtual spaces. Virtual and remote laboratories, while not substituting the hands-on experience of physical labs, offered promising avenues to enhance learning during the disruption of in-person education. While most teaching activities transitioned seamlessly to online formats, laboratory sessions presented unique logistical challenges, including cancellations of fieldwork. Additionally, concerns arose regarding disparities in student achievement based on income levels. This study seeks to provide an overview of the implementation status of virtual and remote laboratories during the lockdown period in education. Its goal is to offer practical insights to improve the quality of learning experiences at home and in online settings.

Over the past several years, port congestion has become a severe problem, as ships are often not able to reach a series of ports based on the designed schedule, which induces changes in the schedules associated with port operations. Moreover, customers can not receive their cargo in a timely manner because of port congestion. This is not only an internal problem within the shipping industry but also calls for collaboration between shipping lines and their upstream or downstream members in the maritime supply chain, including shippers and port operators. This study concentrates on the tactical planning problem for optimizing ship schedules to determine the number of ships, the projected maximum speed, and the ship service schedule, which is set for a company on a certain route. We develop a novel multi-objective programming model for the green vessel scheduling problem under port congestion, and queuing theory is used to calculate the uncertain queuing times at ports. The ultimate goal of developing this model is to maximize cost efficiency, service reliability, and environmental benefits. A multi-objective grey wolf optimizer algorithm is introduced for solving this problem, which shows some computational advantages compared to the NSGA-II algorithm commonly used at the most advanced level. Experimental results verify the application of the model and confirm that more congested periods induce more service unreliability issues rather than additional costs and emissions generated. To this end, the proposed methodology would allow designing better liner shipping schedules to alleviate port congestion and provide sustainable shipping services.

Climate change poses a threat to the survival of the human race. Increased interest in climate change, carbon peaks, and carbon neutralization and rising recognition of the challenges inherent to highlighting this issue provides the opportunity to carry out a bibliometric study to identify what research can generate ideas regarding climate change, carbon peaks, and carbon neutralization. As expected, it may align with the dual goals of the Chinese government agenda in terms of a carbon peak and carbon neutralization in 2030 and 2060, respectively. The recent argument has induced calls for improved transparency and standardization in the approaches adopted to synthesize climate change, carbon peak, and carbon neutralization research. Nevertheless, key questions are still unanswered, namely, what are the key contributions that the research community has produced in relation to climate change, carbon peaks, and carbon neutralization? Have their contributions been inclined toward specific geographical areas, directions, and themes? As such, software tools for bibliometric analysis, VOSviewer, and Python were used to conduct a systematic quantitative analysis of the relevant literature on climate change, carbon peaks, and carbon neutralization. The results show that carbon peaks and carbon neutralization have received wide attention from academic scholars. In the meantime, China faces the unfolding challenges of economic, technological, and political factors that need to be addressed to achieve carbon peak and carbon neutralization. This study provides policy implications for achieving China’s emission reduction targets.

Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) have received increasing attention from industrial practitioners, researchers, and policymakers because of industry 4.0 and the digitization of the maritime industry. Crucial questions related to security, safety of personnel and vessels, and socio-economic domains have been addressed to a certain extent. In recent years, China has arisen as one of the leading maritime players worldwide, and unmanned vessels could remarkably influence the Chinese maritime industry. However, there is still a lack of systematic studies aiming to develop a deep understanding of potential advantages and challenges associated with the deployment of unmanned vessels in China. Therefore, using a mixed-method research design, this study attempts to obtain valuable insights based on the viewpoints of the key Chinese stakeholders concerning unmanned vessels, including the benefits, the restrictions, the obstacles to large-scale implementation, the risks, and how to mitigate possible implementation barriers. The main advantage of deploying unmanned ships was found to be the reduction in the ship crew size or complete elimination of the ship crew, which would reduce the operating costs and eliminate human errors on board the ships. Nevertheless, along with important advantages, a number of challenges associated with the development and deployment of unmanned ships were identified, including technological challenges, regulatory challenges, safety and security challenges, and technology investment challenges. All these challenges have to be adequately addressed by the relevant stakeholders to ensure the successful deployment of unmanned ships around the globe in the following years.

This study proposes a novel fuzzy programming optimization model for tugboat scheduling, directly considering multiple berthing bases, time windows, and operational uncertainties. The uncertainties in the required number of tugboats, the earliest start time, the latest start time, the processing time, and the start and end locations of each task are directly captured in the proposed fuzzy optimization model. The objective of the presented formulation is to minimize the total cost of fuel and delays. According to the characteristics of the problem, a Grey Wolf Optimization algorithm based on random probability encoding and custom genetic operators is proposed. The proposed algorithm, LINGO, the canonical Grey Wolf Optimization algorithm, and particle swarm optimization were used to compare and analyze the results of several examples. The results validate the efficiency of the proposed algorithm against the alternative exact and metaheuristics methods. Moreover, the findings from the conducted sensitivity analysis show the applicability of the developed fuzzy programming model for different confidence interval levels.

Since the rise of intelligent control and multi-sensor integration technology, the development of autonomous ships has been significantly growing over the last decade. This advancement has painted a picture of extreme change with a radical alteration of human factors and new operating models. Inherent with the development of such ships, some concerns regarding their safe operation and integration into the maritime regulatory framework arose. Although the introduction of autonomous vessels is not an impending factor, it is the future, and one day will come into application. The primary concern inherent in the development of autonomous ships is compliance with the current International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGS) 1972. This paper uses an interdisciplinary approach to examine autonomous vessel seaborne interactions. The results show that we should actively support the modernization of the maritime industry and integrate it with other autonomous industries in the world.