On Optimizing Maritime Routes in Particularly Sensitive Sea Areas

The problems related to ship routing have attracted the interest of many researchers and practitioners for decades. The interest has always been renewed by both changes in regulations and laws, and technological advances. In the last years, several efforts have been devoted towards the preservation of marine species, which, combined with existing protocols on emission reductions, are prospected to provide effective support towards the defense of marine ecosystems and ocean integrity. In this paper, we investigate the problem of determining maritime routes for a fleet of ships through Particularly Sensitive Sea Areas (PSSAs), which are designated by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) in alignment with UN Sustainable Development Goal 14, aiming at protecting selected sea regions. A PSSA-constrained maritime routing problem is here proposed, and a Mixed-Integer Linear Programming formulation to solve it is provided. The application to a case study relevant to the Mediterranean Sea, which encompasses two of the 18 PSSA currently established in the world, is described and discussed.