Leveraging the 4th Industrial Revolution Technology for Sustainable Development of the Northern Sea Route (NSR)—The Case Study of Autonomous Vessel
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The article is devoted to current and important issues that draw attention to the relationship between applied technologies in maritime transport and sustainable development. The article considers the possibilities of reducing the negative impact of sea shipping on the environment, and thus on the society and economy, in the context of economic factors. It is worth mentioning that the existing methods of reducing emissions from ships in merchant shipping are based, to the greatest extent, on the quality of the marine fuels used and are proceeding along the path of technological development, on the one hand, forced by the shipowners' pressure for more and more fuel-efficient solutions, and, on the other hand, pulled by the provisions of international law in the scope of increasingly stricter limits of permissible emissions from a ship both during the voyage and while in port. The article has an adequate theoretical basis, relevant information and analysis, good partial (in the article) and final (in the conclusion) conclusions. The article uses original research by the author and cited research by other researchers, which enriches its content. It is written in good language and is based on an analysis of current and well-chosen literature. The article should therefore be regarded rather as an interesting introduction to a very important issue and treated as a scientific article.
In the introduction there is a lack of clearly stated aim and research thesis which should be completed.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: 
Author Response.pdf
Reviewer 2 Report
Dear authors,
I appreciate your efforts involved in this exciting research study, which can be very appealing to a dedicated community of readers and specialists working in the marine field. The results obtained by applying the proposed control concept of 4IR technology on an NSR navigation for an autonomous vessel, selected as a case study, are very impressive. At a benchmark, the total costs of the traditional and autonomous vessel are compared on the basis of a specified cost breakdown model. Interesting scenario analysis is performed to investigate the economic, social and environmental effects of the autonomous vessel depending on the season and route. A final conclusion of this research study is that an autonomous vessel could be a solution to create a better crew working environment by minimizing the number of people on board.
I just have the following tips for you:
- Please insert in the manuscript a table with all the acronyms/abbreviations used in the text to increase its readability.
- Please specify in the text the software package and its version used in the simulations.
- Finally, a comparison of the results obtained in this research with similar ones in the literature will be very useful.
- Specify in the Discussion section what are future research directions you want to approach.
Author Response
Please see the attachment
Author Response File: Author Response.pdf
