There has been an explosive growth in shortsea shipping related research during the last six years. In this period there have been about 80 papers presented at the three European Research Roundtable on Shortsea Shipping conferences to date (1992, 1994, and 1996). In addition, the three FAST international conferences on fast waterborne transport (1991, 1993, and 1995) presented close to 300 papers, of which about 70 directly focus on shortsea shipping.

Various projects, national and international, have been also initiated in this area. In the context of the 4th Framework Program, the European Commission/ Directorate General for Transport (DGVII) has launched in early 1996 several shared cost projects, as well as a concerted action explicitly targeted to shortsea shipping. This Concerted Action on Shortsea Shipping is also known as SSS-CA. Other directorates such as DGXII and DGXIII have also launched related projects in early 1996.

In view of such a boom of research activity, it became imperative to critically survey such work, and also make a taxonomy of it, so that all this work is sorted out, and the baseline for further research becomes clear. Failure to do this would inevitably result in duplication of effort, gaps in research, lack of vision on what is needed, and other negative ramifications. The purpose of the State of the Art Study on SSS has been to carry out a critical survey and taxonomy of such work. The survey has involved a European-wide solicitation of input on related work, mainly in the context of the Concerted Action on SSS, but also from other sources.

The State of the Art Study was completed in July 1996 by NTUA and is in two volumes: Volume I is the main report and Volume II is an appendix containing detailed information on the collected material.

Without claiming that the contents of the State of the Art Study are encyclopedic, or that each and every piece of material collected has been reviewed in depth, we can at least claim that the 441 entries catalogued represent an unprecedented compilation of material in this area.

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