Narrow Results

The advent of rapid sea ice melting in the Arctic, in the frame of climate change, gave rise to scenarios of fast-expanding commercial shipping along Arctic passages. However, about 20 years after the emergence of such scenarios, Arctic shipping did expand but not transit shipping. This chapter analyzes traffic based on Canadian, Russian, and Greenlandic statistics with a view to drawing a portrait of traffic in their respective Arctic waters. The pictures, along with the analyses of shipping constraints in Arctic waters, shed light on the opportunities and obstacles that orient the development of sea transportation in the Arctic. They underline that shorter distances are not paramount in the shipowners’ strategies but that destinational traffic, driven by the expansion of natural resource extraction, is the driving engine of shipping in the Arctic.

The development of the export potential of the Southern Federal District of the Russian Federation is associated with the justified need to increase the capacity of transport and logistics infrastructure of the studied region and make more rational use of its geopolitical potential. Using geopolitical potential, regions of the Russian Federation seek to optimize the development of competitive industries in areas of economic activity, expanding export potential and pursuing the objectives of government policy to increase the region’s non-resource and non-energy exports, including from the perspective of the region’s transit potential. In essence, the concepts of export potential and transit potential are interrelated and interdependent; In practice, the formation and development of one provoke the growth of the other. Transit and export potential are concepts based on export-oriented production and on the capacity of transport and logistics infrastructure. Investments in the construction of regional distribution centers, which are embedded in the distribution chains of industries operating in the region, have the greatest importance in developing the transit and export potential of the logistics system. The chapter identifies the need to transition logistics services provided in the Russian Federation to a new integrated level of service. The reason for this situation is the increasing demand for quality and accelerated time performance of services every year, as evidenced by the expansion of the very concept of fulfillment. The authors applied statistical analysis and comparison methods, sampling, correlation and regression, and horizontal and vertical analysis. Investments in the construction of logistics centers are objectively local in practice, i.e., they have a local character. The investor receives the necessary information via the relevant ministries and departments, and the possible benefits and threats in terms of production location and preferences are considered in the investment decision-making process. In this process, the agencies must be fully involved in preparing a package of information on the available transport and logistics options for the transport and marketing of products. Implementing an investment project is a lengthy process. By understanding the investor’s needs, it is possible to offer solutions that are as attractive as possible for the investment. Since the necessary transport and logistics system will be developed by local businesses and logistics operators, the regional economy receives significant benefits realized in the creation of new jobs and increased revenues for the regional budget.

It is known that small-scale structures in the transit light curves of exoplanets can be used to infer the sizes and temperatures of dark spots or bright faculae of their host stars. Among many factors, the precision depends on the observational statistics, the ratio of the size of the exoplanet to that of the dark (or bright) spot and the cadence used in the light curve measurements. We have developed a numerical code allowing us to explore the effects and limitations of such a method for stars of different spectral types.