Optimised fusion model for meeting sulphur abatement standards in shipping industry

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) enforced stricter sulphur abatement regulations since shipping emission has become one of the most major cause of the atmospheric pollution. Experts from the industry and academicians try to find the balanced solution among low-sulphur fuel, clean energy, and purposely fit scrubber by conventional statistical methods however failed to reach a satisfying conclusion. In addition, maritime datasets are usually massive, multi-source, and heterogeneous, it seems imperative for the maritime industry to adapt to the worldwide trend of intellectualisation and promote sustainable development. This work delineates and compares three main sulphur abatement solutions for ships through a thorough investigation of the current research state, and proposes a new framework based on a fusion model using modern big data and data mining algorithms. This work identifies and summarises major factors (with high impacts) in sulphur abatement solutions in the ocean shipping industry and integrate those high-level impacting factors to the proposed fusion model. The proposed framework can be optimised and utilised in determining suitable solutions for different ships, as well as shipping routes.