SUNY Maritime is preparing the next generation of American professional mariners. The Stephen B. Luce Library manages both the on-campus library and the Ship’s Library on the college’s training ship. The old ship’s lack of technological infrastructure required the library to run a redundant, secondary open-source ILS. The delivery of the new TS Empire State 7 in September 2023 allowed for the expansion of Alma as the Ship’s Library’s primary ILS. This was a year-long project requiring new library configurations, migration of old bibliographic records to new workflows for the Ship’s Librarian, and on-the-fly troubleshooting after cybersecurity complications with the U.S. Federal Government. This presentation will focus on the implementation of Alma as the Ship’s Library ILS, an assessment of the production environment after a full Summer Sea Term, and planned revisions. Participants supporting Alma in traditional and non-traditional library settings are highly encouraged to attend.

Student feedback demonstrated to Maritime College library faculty that familiarity and comfort with the library’s space and services severely deteriorated during the pandemic. Students lacked familiarity with group and individual study spaces in the library, types of materials available, and library support services. Library anxiety and antiquated stereotypes of what a library is proved to be barriers to students from fully taking advantage of what the library offers. For the current academic year, the librarians reinvented the pre-pandemic library scavenger hunt in the library orientation session attended by all LEAD 101 courses, a required freshman seminar class for first semester students. This image-based scavenger hunt utilized free tools from Padlet and Canva to make the scavenger hunt a fun group-based activity. It also simplified the workflow and labor on the librarians, which was critical in an understaffed environment. In this session, participants will see the components of the scavenger hunt as well as hear about challenges and successes.

While many of the technologies required to completely remove human presence from surface vessels have existed for decades, some are still in development and at least a few that will prove crucial to successful implementation have not yet been invented. This thesis examines the current state of the various required shipboard automation technologies to the extent such information is available to the public and attempts to identify the missing or lagging pieces in order to establish the current boundaries of economic feasibility for scaling up from the already-proven small unmanned surface vessels to larger military and commercial applications. By scouring press releases, industry articles, and professional studies as well as interviewing individuals involved in autonomous technologies from across the maritime and power generation industries, this research captures a snapshot of the advances, issues, and restrictions currently inherent in uncrewed surface vessel implementation and presents them in a singular, cohesive document suitable for thoroughly familiarizing industry decision-makers. The research finds that while smaller uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) are prolific and well-established, scaling up in size and its requisite increase in overall complexity becomes more economically challenging when design requirements pass specific thresholds in any of a handful of categories. The line between economically feasible and economically challenging runs through the factors of: building anew or converting an existing vessel; the amount of heat rejection (cooling capacity) required; whether power and energy requirements exceed currently available battery capacity; the number of motor-operated valves required in the design; the allowable elapsed time to provide human intervention in the event of a major malfunction; and the tolerance for total loss of the USV. While larger and more complex USVs are possible and certainly on the horizon, they may not be economically feasible for a given application due to the current limitations of specific equipment. This thesis examines those factors in turn.

Offshore wind (OSW) development is a new undertaking in the US. This project is a response to New Jersey’s 2011 Energy Master Plan that envisions procuring 22.5% of the state’s power originating from renewable sources by 2021. The Offshore Wind Economic Development Act called for at least 1,100 MW of Offshore Wind generations to be subsidized by an Offshore Wind Renewable Energy Certificate program. The overreaching goal of this research is to provide information and recommendations for the maritime aspects, both vessel and port interface’. The study, using the European experience, identifies vessel types, vessel installation methods, needs and operating characteristics through all phases of OSW development. It also identifies regulatory or legislative requirements and/or other road blocks to the use of particular vessels. The study seeks competitive advantages and disadvantages of vessel acquisition, lease, construction or other alternatives. The study proposes solutions and recommendations that best position the State of New Jersey to be the national leader in OSW development, including potential interstate or cooperative endeavors. Financial aspects and considerations of vessel acquisition are presented. The research also proposes a port/OSW industry interface strategy for short-, mid-, and long-term industry development. In general, the study identifies the maritime port life-cycle requirements for installation, construction, operation and maintenance based on geographic factors, and the potential for multi-use development at New Jersey’s East Coast ports. Finally, the study highlights the economic impact of OSW development on the state population and the energy-generating industry. The study recommends the development of a clear OSW policy with a commitment of budgets and in partnerships with industry and other stakeholders.

The main goal of this Thesis is to analyze the modern and critical issue of shipping decarbonization providing an analytic approach on crucial questions which affect the global shipping nowadays. According to recent studies, the maritime industry is accountable for more than 85% of the world’s trade. At the same time, it consumes 2% of the world’s energy demand, adding 3% to the overall Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions. Based on these numbers, it can be said that the industry is one of the most energy advanced and efficient industries, but in parallel particularly harmful for the environment. It has been legislated by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) that, until 2050 the air emissions of the industry must have been reduced by 50% compared to 2008. Since early 2020, the so-called Sulphur cap has been activated, which dictates that sulphur-based emissions should be reduced to 0.5%. In order to achieve the IMO goals various pathways have been developed, of which the most common are speed reduction (slow steaming), scrubbers’ installation and Low Sulphur Fuel Oils (LSFO). Nevertheless, the long-term studies agree that in order to achieve the IMO goals, the industry should move towards new alternative fuels, emitting lower or zero harmful gases. Based on these facts, this Thesis will try to provide a critical overview of the current state of the maritime field and its contribution to the world’s trade and economy, emphasizing on the global shipping. IMO Marine Environment Protection Committee applied the MEPC regulations 75, 76 and 77 on June 2021, building on Energy Efficient Existing Ship Index for existing ships and Energy Efficient Design Index for new buildings (came into force since 2013). In addition, IMO has also adopter the Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII) which basically requires specific goals on vessels for reducing their carbon operational emissions (came into force on January 1st 2023). All these measures are indicated in MARPOL Annex VI – Ship Decarbonization as per IMO regulations.

A poster presentation from Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC) October 7, 2021.

The entwinement of shipboard traditional and cyber assets and the unique and potentially severe hazards of a liquefied gas carrier necessitate the need of the robust implementation of a shipboard cyber risk management process. Academic research on maritime cyber risk management lack an empirical research on a shipboard system in operation and a broader coverage of regulatory and commercial insights in formulating such process. This thesis aims to propose a shipboard cyber risk management process with broader technological, regulatory, and commercial perspectives in the maritime transportation of liquefied gas cargo. Case study methodology is applied to describe the formulation and implementation of a shipboard cyber risk management process. Interpretive data collection is conducted to identify and review key stakeholders on the cyber risk management of American liquefied gas carriers and their relevant resources. A baseline of references is proposed to formulate a shipboard cyber risk management process. For this purpose, the cyberspace and vulnerabilities of the maritime industry is reviewed to identify considerations originating from a cyber environment, the maritime industry, and a vessel. Case study was conducted by reviewing documents and observing a cargo handling system commissioned on a liquefied petroleum gas carrier in operation. Asset-based risk assessment is conducted to determine quantitative risk impact value of and cyber threats to critical equipment. The study demonstrates how the integration of traditional and cyber assets in a cargo handling system introduce cyber threats and aggravate physical threats. Results demonstrates how existing company and shipboard practices can be enhanced to improve shipboard cyber resilience.

The cruise industry is facing a challenge that has never been seen before. The COVID-19 Pandemic has crippled a market that has been steadily growing for decades and, before this, showed no end in sight. As cruise lines halt operations, hemorrhage money, and call for loans just to stay in business, there also must be a complete shift in how these companies operate and vessels run in order to ensure viability. The general public has understood the risks of cruising since its inception, but this new era of uncommon hazards is changing their view to second guess safety and practicability of a vacation at sea. Patterns have begun to emerge where ship size, itinerary, common areas, and space ratios have all played an integral role in the spread of this pandemic onboard ships. Indications from the public have shown that they have little knowledge of how ships work and focus more on assumptions and grouping companies as a collective when assessing how safe the cruise market is. Since cruise companies tend to be merged together in the public's mind due to lack of understanding, the market as a whole needs to implement new strategies that are clearly visible to the public now and hidden from public view later on in order to create and maintain consumer confidence. The companies need to form a holistic approach to combat this spread and regain control of their industry. Presented in this thesis is evidence of a changing cruise industry landscape and strategies to better safeguard the market from the likelihood of this happening in the future. Additional research after implementation of the industry's new operating structures would be beneficial to improve on these findings.

As technology advances, network congestion avoidance becomes increasingly more important. For this project, we attempted to analyze and optimize the Additive Increase, Multiplicative Decrease (AIMD) algorithm to gather data for our partner company. We created our own AIMD models and ran simulations to find and compare relevant data.

My seminar paper surveys accounts of Evil May Day from 1517 to The Play of Sir Thomas More (1603-04). It begins by analyzing contemporary accounts and chronicle histories. It then moves on to consider the ways in which the event has been understood by biographers as a seminal moment in the life of Thomas More. Shifting from the historical to the literary, it gestures towards the ways in which Utopia anticipates and attempts to make impossible events like Evil May Day, in large part because of Utopia's radical reimagining of the early modern calendar.. My general position is that time-reckoning is contested throughout the early modern period, and that it is both more malleable than traditionalists would allow, and more sticky than reformers would prefer. Evil May Day is an unusually potent symbol for social conflict and social cohesion, and an anniversary which lingered in early modern imaginations.