Impact of the Russia–Ukraine Conflict on Global Marine Network Based on Massive Vessel Trajectories

Abstract

Maritime transportation plays a vital role in global trade, and studying the resilience of the global maritime network is crucial for ensuring its sustainable development. Currently, the ongoing conflict between Russia and Ukraine has garnered significant global attention. However, there is a lack of specific research on the impact of the conflict on maritime shipping, particularly the resilience of the global maritime network. This paper proposes a resilience assessment framework under the influence of significant events by combining complex network metrics and network performance indicators from the resilience triangle model. It quantitatively evaluates the resilience changes in the global maritime network before and after the outbreak of the Russia–Ukraine conflict. The experiment utilizes real automatic identification system (AIS) maritime trajectory data to quantify and visualize the changes in global maritime traffic during a 20-day period before and after the conflict, constructing the global maritime network for resilience calculations. The research findings indicate the following changes occurred after the Russia–Ukraine conflict. Firstly, the global maritime industry experienced overall growth, with increased ship transportation between ports. Transportation in certain regions was negatively affected, with a significant decrease in ship activities in the Black Sea and Adriatic Sea areas. The positions of Russia and Ukraine in the world maritime industry noticeably declined. Secondly, the network connectivity, network size, and network density of the global maritime network significantly increased, indicating an enhanced network resilience. According to our quantitative results, from a topological perspective, we observed the following changes: network connectivity increased by 27.2%, network scale increased by 36.6%, network density increased by 32.4%, and network resilience increased by 18.6%. Thirdly, the global maritime network is characterized by a high degree of heterogeneity, and the impact of conflicts on the heterogeneity of the shipping network is not significant. Finally, the network exhibited a slower performance decline under random attacks, while deliberate attacks led to a sharp decline. Due to the adaptive nature of the maritime network, the resilience of the network improves in terms of its topology following the outbreak of conflicts. After conflict incidents, the rate of performance decline during simulated attacks is lower compared to the pre-conflict period.