Maritime Risk Assessment for Portugal, Sweden and the Baltic Sea with an emphasis on shadow fleets

While safety qualities of vessels in the maritime industry have improved over time, recent geopolitical developments and tensions influence maritime trade flows and the associated risk exposure of the global fleet. This comprehensive study quantifies risk exposure in the Portuguese EEZ, the Swedish EEZ and the Baltic Area with an emphasis on pollution risk exposure from tankers and the emerging shadow fleet. Risk exposure is expressed as the monetary value at risk (MVR), a proxy of potential incident costs calculated at ship level. We construct a shadow fleet watchlist comprising of designated vessels and supplemented by additions based on a prediction model. The study is based on comprehensive datasets using global ship particular data, incident data and global AIS data. The resulting analysis is based on over 45.2 million estimates of 146,103 unique ships from January 2021 to December 2024. Risk exposure is highly seasonal for cruise and passenger ships that are an important risk exposure component for the Portuguese EEZ and the Baltic Area besides tankers. At the global level, pollution risk exposure increased by 3% for tankers and 3.7% for oil tankers from 2023 to 2024 while in the areas of interest, the increase is estimated to be higher (over 40% for the Baltic Region, over 100% for the Gulf of Finland and over 20% for the Portuguese EEZ). Vessels on designated lists account for 7.4% of global pollution risk compared to 32% for the Gulf of Finland or 54% if the total shadow fleet is considered. We project a monthly increase of pollution risk exposure for tankers of 2.7% for the Gulf of Finland up to December 2027. Risk exposure from chemical and product tankers did not change significantly for the study period and most products are still carried by the normal fleet with only a few vessels on designated lists for chemical and product tankers. Risk profiling can be linked with live AIS data for improved domain awareness and can form the basis for ship specific situational awareness ratings that send out alerts when there is a potentially dangerous situation. The results help policy makers and risk stakeholders in the maritime industry to better understand and mitigate risk exposure by applying risk mitigation measures that are proportionate to the costs to be mitigated and by improving domain or situational awareness to prevent costly incidents from occurring in times of increased uncertainties.