Study of cargo flows in the Gulf of Finland in emergency situations (STOCA)
The STOCA project focuses in improved sustainable accessibility and movement of cargo within the region. The special focus is on the movement of cargo in emergency situations in an economic and environmentally sustainable way. The project concentrates on the following topics: the utilization and movement of cargo handling capacity, alternative roads and railways, oil spill response readiness, paperless transaction in cargo boarding problems such as, time delay for cargo boarding, reducing the time of cargo boarding, competitive port fees in Estonia in comparison with Finnish ports, discussing possible alternatives for the privatisation of the boarding pass to Russia, increasing strategic labour and investment focus of logistics business, and the development of new IT systems. With the help of this project's results, business actors and authorities in both Finland and Estonia will be prepared to renew their strategies and operations to meet the future requirements, and to enhance the competitiveness of the region.
In this project Lappeenranta University of Technology, Kouvola Research Unit will analyze different types of emergency situations occurring at the arbitrary periods of time (within defined investigation period) through computer based simulation models. Mostly system dynamics simulation is used for this purpose, but the utilization of more advanced methods are also emphasised during the implementation of the project, for example, agent based simulation. These initial and small-scale agent models enable the use of advanced artificial intelligence in the project, among complex command structures in the models; until today it has not been possible to conduct these with other approaches.
