Expected results and impact
The monitoring and the understating of the maritime traffic and their risk influencing factors are important elements for safe and efficient maritime operations. However, the risk features of the maritime traffic are typically not integrated in the frameworks for maritime situational assessment and in the decision making on the adequate actions to ensure the safety and the security of the maritime traffic.
context
main goal
Therefore, MoniRisk proposes to develop an innovative risk assessment framework that integrates the existing knowledge and new models and tools with the objective of formulating a dynamic risk index for individual ships and for the maritime traffic in coastal waters. This requires research on models for accident probability prediction, the analysis and modelling of the influence of human and organizational factors on ship accidents and the development of Bayesian Network (BN) models that describe in probabilistic terms the contribution of external and internal risk influencing factors in the accidents.
In a second stage, relevant accidental scenarios involving tankers and passenger ships will be identified and analyzed in detail. The detailed analysis includes the probabilistic evaluation of their safety and the analysis of the consequences of the accidents in terms of loss of life and environmental damages due to oil spills.
expectation
main results and their impact
The analysis of the maritime traffic and the definition of specific safe routes and operational profiles for the maritime traffic off the continental coast of Portugal will reduce the uncertainty of each operation, thus increasing the overall safety level and the efficiency of the current maritime operations. This can benefit many maritime stakeholders for optimizing their operations such as port operators, pilotage services, ship owners and ship operators. Moreover, these safe routes have the potential to become one of the key enablers for future autonomous vessels traffic operations.
The statistical models that characterize the normal behaviour of the maritime traffic provide the basis for defining specific routes for ships navigating in coastal waters and allow for the development of probabilistic methods for anomaly and collision detection. These tools will provide alerts on abnormal traffic behaviour of individual ships and information on the likelihood of collisions in various geographical locations and on the collision parameters such as the ship types and sizes, collision angles, collision speed and the time of the day of a potential collision.
The dynamic risk index will combine historical and observed real-time Automatic Identification System (AIS) data to provide a means for assessing the risk changes in order of time and space. This function is an important feature for developing early alerts to support maritime traffic control and vessel operators, thus improving both the prevention and response to ship accidents.
Moreover, the historical information on the risks of the maritime traffic provided by an integrated information system facilitates decision making by the Maritime Authorities on operational and accident response risk control options, such as:
- Improving and defining new traffic separation schemes or restrictions to navigation in severe weather conditions.
- Improving training and qualification of ships’ crew, navigational services and aids.
- Resource availability and planning to improve response to ship accidents, both of search and rescue and of oil-combating operations.
The detailed analyses of specific accident scenarios contribute to the development of a new risk-based approach to ship design and operation, which is in line with the recent IMO’s concerns about a more holistic and proactive approach to safety applicable to innovative ship designs and new operational modes.