Virtual Airport Hub—A New Business Model to Reduce GHG Emissions in Continental Air Transport

Qualitative–Quantitative Warning Modeling of Energy Consumption Processes in Inland Waterway Freight Transport on River Sections for Environmental Management

The article concerns the assessment of the energy consumption of inland waterway freight transport on river sections in the context of environmental management. The research question was: Does the choice of the route determine the total energy consumption of inland waterway transport and therefore affect the potential of cargo transport of this mode? The article aims to indicate the directions of energy consumption by inland waterway freight transport depending on the route selection, the volume of transport, and the length of the route. The study was carried out on nine sections of the Odra River in Poland during the years 2015–2020. Statistical and econometric techniques were used, i.e., ANOVA, generalized linear models, Eta coefficients, Lasso and Ridge regularization, and X-average control charts (Six Sigma tool). Based on early warning models, river sections were identified that favor the rationalization of energy consumption in terms of the network. The sensitivity of the energy consumption of inland waterway transport to changes in the average distance and in the volume of transport was examined. With the use of Six Sigma tools, the instability of the energy consumption processes of inland waterway transport was identified, paying attention to the source of the mismatch, which was the increase in the average transport distance in the sections, where energy consumption increased due to the operational and navigation conditions of these sections.

Sustainable Development Programming of Airports by Identification of Non-Efficient Units

This article concerns the identification of inefficient airports and the exploration of spatial autocorrelation for programming sustainable development. The first research question was: do domestic airports cooperate by shifting passenger service and traffic to the geographically closest airport to respect the idea of sustainable development (in view of the rationalization of energy consumption)? The second question was: do they excessively compete for passengers and the carriers serving them? The aim was to identify ineffective units (taking into account energy consumption, airplane traffic, and passenger movement) and to evaluate the spatial autocorrelation between national airports, which shows whether airports cooperate or compete with each other. The study was conducted on 12 airports. An innovative extension of the data envelopment analysis method using methods in the field of spatial econometrics (including two-dimensional Moran I statistics and local LISA statistics) and artificial intelligence was applied. It was verified that ineffective airports have a non-rationalized structure of inputs to outputs. Based on the map-graph of connections, airports have been identified to which part of airplane traffic service can be transferred. Based on Moran statistics and local LISA statistics, it was confirmed that airports compete with each other. There was a strong polarization of efficient airports.