This project aims to examine the impact of market sentiment on the share price behavior of public listed shipping stocks, highlighting their unique characteristics as an “alternative asset class”. Meanwhile, we will explore the potential to predict global stock market returns using shipping market sentiment. Investigating this dual relationship will shed light on the hedging potential of shipping equities within broader financial market.

Supervisor: Haiying Jia.

This project aims to explore the development potential of the Northern Sea Route (NSR) and conduct a comprehensive assessment of the associated risks. The research will evaluate the strategic, economic, and logistical benefits of expanding the NSR, while carefully considering the potential environmental and social consequences, such as the fragile Arctic biological environment, disruption to the tourism industry, and potential challenges for local communities. Additionally, the project will examine geopolitical, regulatory, and safety concerns, providing a balanced analysis of the opportunities and threats posed by the development of this critical Arctic shipping corridor.

Supervisor: Haiying Jia.

This project aims to empirically evaluate the value and impact of period-extension options in Timecharter contracts, following the completion of the mandatory term. By analyzing real-world data and market conditions, the research will assess how these extension options influence contract flexibility, risk management, and decision-making for ship operators and owners.

The study will also explore the economic benefits and strategic advantages of utilizing these options in various market scenarios, providing insights into optimizing Timecharter agreements in a fluctuating maritime environment.

Supervisor: Haiying Jia.

This project will leverage data analytics models to predict spot freight rates and assess the value of foresight in key drivers such as supply and demand dynamics, vessel spatial positioning, and other critical factors. The research aims to empirically investigate the theoretically implied market efficiency, providing insights into how predictive accuracy can enhance decision-making and optimize market outcomes.

Supervisor: Haiying Jia.

This project aims to investigate the implications, efficiency, and effectiveness of the EU’s FuelEU Maritime regulation on bunker fuel consumption, with a focus on its impact on ship operations and trade. The research will explore the various compliance strategies available to ship operators and owners as the regulation comes into force in January 2025.

The project will assess the flexibility and economic viability of different decision-making pathways, helping stakeholders determine the most cost-effective and strategic choices for maintaining compliance under the evolving regulatory framework.

Supervisor: Haiying Jia.

This project aims to identify key trading signals and develop trading strategies for the ship spot and short-term chartering markets. By leveraging analytics and predictive modeling techniques, the goal is to uncover actionable insights that can optimize decision-making in spot market trades and short-period charters.

Supervisor: Haiying Jia.

How to build future sustainable offshore logistics. Shipping technology, fleet renewal, energy-efficient operations will become crucial in the path towards zero-emission logistics along the Norwegian continental shelf. This topics is part of a large project in collaboration with main Norwegian stakeholders.

Supervisor: Mario Guajardo.

This project studies several topics on optimization models and methods for decision support in production of dairy and meat products. The aim is to improve profitability while reducing greenhouse gas emissions of the farming sector in Norway. It is part of a large project in collaboration with the main Norwegian stakeholders in this sector.

Supervisor: Mario Guajardo.

Utilizing weather data and AIS data, we aim to evaluate the influence of climatic events on routine maritime trade operations. Significant events, such as the draught restriction in the Panama Canal due to severe droughts, have resulted in costlier transits and prolonged waiting time durations. This thesis can investigate the externality cost of severe weather patterns, such as intensified El Niño.

Supervisor: Gabriel Fuentes

By quantifying shipping emissions, including greenhouse gases (GHGs) and sulfur, a thesis on this topic can investigate the impact of maritime climate-related policies on the overall trajectory of vessel emissions. There's ongoing debate surrounding regulations like the IMO 2020 Sulphur Cap and the introduction of measures like the Carbon Intensity Indicator (CII). We will evaluate the appropriateness and effectiveness of these regulations.

Supervisor: Gabriel Fuentes

Maritime investments face uncertainties with evolving climate-related policies. A seemingly recent and valuable asset today might become obsolete or uncompetitive due to policy shifts in the near future. A thesis on this topic could aim to introduce a model that navigates potential scenarios related to the progression of climate policies.

Supervisor: Gabriel Fuentes

The phenomenon of "dark fleets" refers to vessels that operate in hidden or illegal capacities, often eluding detection through various means. Leveraging a blend of AIS (Automatic Identification System) data and satellite optical imagery, we can observe the activities of these fleets, particularly in the grain and oil trade sectors. Your thesis could focus on the externalities of the dark fleet on the legal market or the effect on trading patterns.

Working with Vake.ai

Supervisor: Evelina Gavrilova-Zoutman and Gabriel Fuentes

In 2019 before the sanitary emergency started, Norway received 5.88 million tourists representing 7,04 billion dollars and 1,7% of its GDP, reaching the highest levels in 2017. In this year, the tourism industry represented nearly 4,2% of Norwegian GDP and attracted around 170 billion NOK in total tourism consumption. These numbers show the potential of this industry for economic growth and depict some challenges. Particularly when we put the number of tourists in relation to the population of the country, it becomes clear the necessity to take a closer look at current policies and opportunities from point of view of operation research. 

For the City of Bergen, the cruise industry is especially important. Bergen receives the largest number of cruise tourists in the country, making of it one of the most visited cities in Scandinavia. 

It might be interesting for cruise companies to have touristic recommendations for their passengers, itineraries that provide the most benefits out the visit, and ensure the passengers will be back to the ship on time. But also, from the city hall perspective, it might be desirable to have a more homogenous distribution of the visitors across town in order to avoid crowds. Additionally, according to Bergen’s urbanization plan, there could be desirable areas of the city where it is more interesting to bring visitors and the money they spend on their trip, in the frame of urban development, social welfare, and environment. 

In order to assess the different locations, it is necessary to understand the city trends, socio-economic indicators, passenger preferences, and tourist offers, among others. Then use this information as support for an optimization model, allowing to suggest the best routes, both for the tourists and the City of Bergen. 

Main supervisor: PhD-candidate Andres Felipe Velez Correa.

In the oil and gas industry, helicopters are widely used for personnel and cargo transport between offshore platforms and heliports on the land. Therefore, the decision-making regarding the composition of the helicopter fleet and the allocation of this resource is vital for a stable operation of oil & gas exploration and extraction. Such tactical decision affects various aspects of an oil company, including contract utilization, carbon footprint, plan robustness and operating expenses.

However, the common practice in the industry is that the decision of fleet composition and allocation is still manually made based on demand forecast and individual’s experience. Such decision-making process cannot guarantee optimal solutions, is not scalable, and would likely lead to low resource utilization rate and high operating cost.

We are now seeing a clear trend in the oil and gas industry which is to apply automation in its various and complex decision-making process with the support of optimization. In terms of the helicopter fleet composition and allocation problem in this case, a decision support tool is expected to facilitate the decision of helicopter chattering and deployment with stochastic demand for the next planning period. Moreover, resource sharing, namely utilizing idle helicopter resources from other operators, is also a promising opportunity to increase the overall efficiency on an industry level and hence is becoming increasingly popular among different oil companies and helicopter operators.

With its trademark solution DaWinci as the industry standard in personnel logistics management, Quorum is the software supplier for many of the largest oil and gas companies in the world. Quorum Software Norway, as the market leader, is now cooperating with several major players in the oil and gas industry to address various new challenges with new software planning tools. This master project will take advantage of Quorum’s expertise in logistics management in oil and gas industry, and look at some of the following issues:

• Literature review on related problems and topics
• Mathematical formulation of the problem
• Study the uncertainty involved in this problem and methods to handle such stochasticity
• Study and develop necessary solution methods
• Analyze the numerical results based on a realistic problem instance from Quorum

Students choosing this project should expect to visit Quorum Software’s Bergen office to work alongside our optimization engineers for up to a week.

Collaborator: Quorum Software, contact person Xin Wang (xin.e.wang@quorumsoftware.com).

Supervisor: Yewen Gu.

Using empirical case studies to quantify how more accurate short-term weather forecasting can improve chartering decisions for a ship operator.

Working with company Western Bulk.

Supervisor: Gabriel Fuentes

Urban population growth is driving an increase in the amount of freight that goes into and out of cities. That growth poses an increasing challenge to freight transportation in smaller compact cities with difficult topology, which is typical for most Norwegian cities and numerous cities abroad.

This transportation challenge is exacerbated by phenomena such as an increase in internet trade, the demand for fast delivery, and a reduction in the ownership of private cars in the city centre which could be used for shopping. The result is an increase in the total volume of freight, and more critically, in the total number of deliveries, normally managed by a large variety of transportation companies.

Unless planned for and regulated, a consequence might be increased traffic, with enhanced energy consumption, that competes for available space and may affect living conditions for a growing urban population.

This project will study small city logistics, with a focus on Bergen, to find the options available for the authorities, business models for a better city logistics setup, as well as mathematical modeling. Will be done in cooperation with the City of Bergen, Vestland County, Bergen Chamber of Commerce and Centre for Climate and Energy Transformation (CET) at The University of Bergen. The project can be qualitative as well as quantitative.

The project is funded by the Research Council of Norway, and we offer two project grants of NOK 25,000.

Possible supervisors: Stein W. Wallace or Julio C. Goez.