 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
STOCA-Study of cargo flows in the Gulf of Finland in emergency situations The Baltic Sea Region (BSR includes: Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland, Denmark, Sweden, Finland, Norway, north-western Russia and northern Germany) is an area of high economic growth. The region attracts foreign direct investments and it offers challenging but positive economic prospects. The dominant mode of transport in the BSR is sea (about 76% of trade in BSR states), and other means of transport cover only 24%. In addition to their own import and export, Finnish and Estonian ports handle a major share of the Russian transit traffic. Finnish ports have mainly concentrated on container import to Russia, and Estonian ports carry a major share of the oil export from Russia. No study on how the very large maritime volumes could be handled when the operational environment changes radically is available. Such changes would occur, for example, if a port or several ports or sea routes would be closed down due to an economic crisis or an environmental hazard. The hypothesis of this project is that preparation for emergency situations can be started beforehand with the analysis of the present and future business environment by combining the information of cargo flows, actors, infrastructure, alternative routes, the co-operation between the ports and cargo flows through the alternative routes e.g., via roads and railroads through Estonia or South-eastern Finland. The cargo flows in the Gulf of Finland will be examined from two different perspectives. Firstly, the present operational environment will be examined and evaluated from the perspective of continuous and sustainable growth. Secondly, the future operational environment will be explored to reveal the potential discontinuities and their effects on the development of the cargo flows in the region. Finally, the alternative future development paths of the regional industry and transportation and their effects on local as well as national businesses will be analysed. The results will reveal the optional strategic and operational actions for the business actors and the authorities. These actions will meet the future challenges of the changing business environment and requirements of the cargo industry in radical changes. For example, we analyse the capacity and potential for alternative routes in Finland and Estonia and estimate changes in traffic patterns, vessel sizes, railway tunnel between Helsinki and Tallinn and finally, offer suggestions for the actors. With the help of this project's results, the actors, i.e. business actors and authorities both in Finland and Estonia, will be able to increase their readiness in extreme as well as in stable operative situations. In other words, they will be prepared to renew their strategies and operations to meet the future requirements. The goal of the research project is analyse, both environmentally and economically, and summarise the present and future business environment of cargo flows in the Gulf of Finland. The analysis provides the alternative development paths of the operational environment of the cargo flows from business and official perspectives within the framework of stable and emergency situations. |
 |
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
