Pollution risk exposure assessment for Portugal and the Baltic Sea with an emphasis on shadow fleets

Recent geopolitical developments influence trade flows and risk exposure of shipping. This comprehensive study based on 45.2 million estimates of the global fleet quantifies the change in pollution risk exposure in the Baltic Sea Area and Portugal with an emphasis on the emerging shadow fleets. Risk exposure is expressed as potential incident costs calculated at the ship level. We construct a shadow fleet watchlist based on designated lists and supplemented by a prediction model based on balanced random forests. We evaluate the prediction power of operational and behavioral aspects of vessels. The results confirm that safety qualities are strongly correlated with sanction compliance and that trade flows and safety qualities of vessel trading out of the Baltic Area have changed. Pollution risk exposure increased by over 100% in the Gulf of Finland and from 2023 to 2024 and over 54% of pollution risk exposure is associated with vessel on our watchlist compared to a global average of 16.4%. Furthermore, we predict a monthly projected increase of 2.7% for this region. As of December 2024, an estimated total risk exposure from all ship types of USD 68.8 million USD (9.9% of the regional total) is potentially not covered by insurance in the Baltic Area. To improve intelligence applications for coastal states, ship specific risk predictions can be with live AIS data to enhance domain awareness. The results help maritime stakeholders better understand the magnitude and change in risk exposure in general and due to the emerging shadow fleet.