Framework for Sustainability Assessment of Maritime Terminals

The maritime sector contributes significantly to climate change, given thenumber of global emissions that this represents. Emissions inventorying isone of the measurement system approaches considered in terminals to mitigate harmful emissions. The concept of sustainability has gained attentionwhere economic, social, and environmental dimensions need to be balanced.Assessing all three sustainability dimensions is important. Both the environment and the society, e.g., human health and safety, are impacted by terminal operations. Reducing their negative impact can compromise the economicgrowth of the terminal. This is challenging the maritime sector, and althoughsome authors define methods to evaluate sustainability in terminals, nostandard guideline is available in the literature. The lack of a common reference guideline makes comparison of sustainability actions in terminals difficult.This paper presents a sustainability assessment framework based on theanalysis of the state of the art in literature contributing to sustainable development of terminals and supporting decision-makers.