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SYSTEMATIC REVIEW article

Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Affairs and Policy
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1523267
This article is part of the Research Topic Challenges and Opportunities for Decarbonizing the Maritime Industry View all articles

Application, opportunities, and challenges of digital technologies in the decarbonizing shipping industry: A bibliometric analysis

Provisionally accepted
Guangnian Xiao Guangnian Xiao 1*Lei Pan Lei Pan 1Fengbo Lai Fengbo Lai 2
  • 1 Shanghai Maritime University, pudong, China
  • 2 Weifang University, Weifang, Shandong Province, China

The final, formatted version of the article will be published soon.

    As Digital Industry 4.0 advances, shipping operators are progressively implementing digital technologies for maritime decarbonization efforts. This review employs a bibliometric methodology to thoroughly examine and analyze the application of digital technology in decarbonizing shipping from 2005 to 2024. Examining 201 publications from the SCI-EXPANDED and SSCI databases elucidates the present condition, challenges, and prospects of digital technology applications in this domain. The review demonstrates the swift expansion of research on digital technologies for decarbonization within the shipping sector via an analysis of annual publication trends. Subsequent journal metrics and collaborative network analysis with VOSviewer identified particularly prolific journals, nations, institutions, and authors. Furthermore, this review delineates the field's principal research clusters and hotspots via keyword co-occurrence analysis, offering direction for future investigations. Ultimately, it examines research gaps in speed optimization, emission prediction, and autonomous ships by integrating keyword co-occurrence analysis with the content of recent publications, and then proposes prospective research options. Future studies on ship speed optimization could benefit from adopting multi-objective optimization methods, combining more machine-learning techniques with the FCP model, etc. Concerning emission prediction, future research efforts could focus on integrating more diverse external data sources into emission prediction models, adopting emerging technology applications, such as ship-based carbon capture (SBCC), introducing blockchain into smart emission monitoring systems, etc. Future research regarding autonomous ships can further refine optimizing route planning and navigation safety, autonomous ship energy efficiency and emission control, maritime communications and navigation systems, ship electrification, and green design. This review offers insights into shipping decarbonization and suggests future research avenues.

    Keywords: Digital technology, shipping, Decarbonization, application, bibliometric analysis

    Received: 05 Nov 2024; Accepted: 14 Jan 2025.

    Copyright: © 2025 Xiao, Pan and Lai. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.

    * Correspondence: Guangnian Xiao, Shanghai Maritime University, pudong, China

    Disclaimer: All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.