Coastal shipping plays a key role in insular regions, ensuring economic, territorial and societal cohesion at national and regional level and supporting the transport of passengers, vehicles and goods. For Greece, passenger maritime transport is essential, considering its lengthy coastline (about 15,000 km) and its numerous islands, scattered within its territorial waters. This paper investigates demand for passenger maritime transport of the Greek coastal shipping before and during the pandemic through a spatial assessment based mainly on primary data provided by the responsible National Authority, thus highlighting issues to be addressed through policy and decision making. Considering that Covid-19 led to significant disruption of transport services, especially in ferry operations, demand for passenger maritime transport was almost halved during 2020. However, the supply services provided are mostly determined by the terms of the public service obligations (PSOs) that are announced by the responsible National Authority and which had to be further enhanced during the pandemic for sufficiently covering the corresponding demand. As such, the paper aims to support policy and decision making, and the implementation of relevant strategies and measures so as to maintain the proper level of services provided in the sector during emergencies.

During the last decades, distraction caused by mobile phones has created concerns about pedestrians' safety, especially while crossing a road. The aim of this paper is to investigate the factors that have an effect on the crossing duration of pedestrians, distracted by mobile phone use, at both signalized and unsignalized crossings. Pedestrians with mobile phones were observed during crossing the aforementioned types of crossings in Thessaloniki, Greece, while their crossing duration was further examined via the development of Bayesian regression models, one for unsignalized and one for signalized crossings. For the research purposes, 554 pedestrians were observed at unsignalized crossings and 409 at signalized ones. The most commonly observed type of distraction was talking on the mobile phone, while texting was also found to be very common. The variables, found to be associated with crossing duration, were significantly different between unsignalized and signalized crossings. Crossing duration at unsignalized crossings seemed to be affected by the experience of a potential conflict with a motorized vehicle and the presence of additional distractors, such as the carrying of an object and the presence of company. At signalized crossings, duration tended to be influenced by the age of the pedestrian and the position before crossing. Current research contributes in understanding and modeling distracted pedestrians' behavior when crossing streets.

Effective monitoring and evaluation (M&E) are essential for ensuring that Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) contributes to the sustainable development of the blue economy while maintaining alignment with institutional frameworks. The study presented in this paper develops a stakeholder-driven M&E framework for sustainable MSP, emphasizing a participatory methodology to enhance the relevance and applicability of performance assessment. Using a structured mutual learning approach, the research engaged stakeholders in two iterative rounds: the first identified key strategic objectives for a sustainable blue economy through dialogue and a complementary questionnaire survey, while the second refined these into corresponding specific objectives. This process was applied in the context of a case study in Greece, where MSP implementation is shaped by national and EU regulatory frameworks and the socio-economic dynamics of the coastal and maritime sectors. The case study provided a practical testing ground for the proposed methodology, involving stakeholders from government, industry, and civil society to ensure a comprehensive perspective. The insights gained informed the design of a key performance indicator (KPI) framework, integrating qualitative and quantitative metrics tailored to the regional maritime governance landscape. These metrics were selected based on the SMARTIE (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-Bound, Inclusive, Equitable) criteria and were clearly aligned with the established objectives. The frequency of measurements, appropriate data collection methods, and indicative data sources were also defined to provide a complete KPIs framework. This stakeholder-driven methodology strengthens the adaptive capacity of MSP by ensuring continuous assessment and revision aligned with sustainability objectives and facilitating ex ante, intermediate, and ex post evaluations. The proposed framework is scalable and transferable, offering a systematic approach to improving policy coherence and decision-making across different geographic, administrative, and sectoral contexts, enabling sustainable governance and maritime governance.