NEW TECHNOLOGY

Continuous Marine Safety A real-time approach to risk management in the port

By Dr. Scott Beatty, CEO

MarineLabs

As the business of port operations becomes more complex, several port operators have turned to using real-time marine monitoring to improve both efficiency and marine safety. This new approach, dubbed Continuous Marine Safety, has helped them become more resilient to volatile weather and high traffic volumes, and keep up with rapid growth.

“When the wind is blowing three knots in the inner harbour, 12 knots at the entrance, and 27 knots out at Triple Island, MarineLabs’ data affords an enhanced level of safety for our commercial and recreational traffic. With this information, we are able to more safely schedule vessel movements, maintain better awareness of the real-time conditions in our anchorages and run a safer and more efficient operation. It’s precisely this type of data that will enable our anticipated growth and makes our safe Port even safer,” said Brent Baxter, Manager of Marine Operations with the Prince Rupert Port Authority. Even during a global pandemic, container volume in many Pacific ports increased by double digits and the forecast of traffic through 2025 remains aggressive.

Growth in port traffic continues to accelerate. Even during a global pandemic, container volume in many Pacific ports increased by double digits and the forecast of traffic through 2025 remains aggressive. Orders for newbuild of containerships in Q4 of 2020 were the highest in five years, and the average size of a shipping vessel continues to increase. The first ship over 20,000 TEU was christened just four years ago, in March of 2017; there are more than 75 in use today, and another 50 will be completed in the next three years. “Based on these dynamics, we assume that around 10 per cent of all container ships in 2025 will have a capacity of 14,000 TEUs and larger.” according to an Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development’s 2018 “Container Ship Size and Port Relocation” Discussion Paper.

Port shifts are also becoming increasingly common; this means that the pressure on port operators to support these increases in ship size and frequency is higher than it has ever been. “The volatility and extent of port shifts have become much larger over the last years,” according to that same report.

Weather and sea conditions are increasing in severity and becoming more volatile. Globally, we now see extreme weather events that were forecast to happen once every century, happening every 16 years. Climate change is not only increasing volatility, but the uncertainty in these forecasts is accelerating as well.

While terminal operators, pilots, and the broad ecosystem of marine partners continue to refine their capabilities, the expectations of regulators and the public are also increasing. There is less tolerance for incidents, and no patience for delay in responding to them.

Taken together, these shifts have and will continue to dramatically change the nature of marine risk. When risk changes, our approach to safety must change as well.

Continuous Marine Safety

In much the same way that smartport systems have allowed coordinated loading and unloading activities to

Spatial mean annual wave power calculated globally and by ocean basin. (Source: Reguero, B.G., Losada, I.J. & Méndez, F.J. “A recent increase in global wave power as a consequence of oceanic warming.” Nature Communications 10, 205 (2019) — www.nature.com)

improve port efficiency, real-time wind and wave data allows both pilots and port operators to shift from desktop risk assessment instruments to a continuous safety approach. This is akin to “looking out the window,” but out of every ship’s window at once.

In the January issue of this magazine, Captain Brian Tuomi discussed the new options for simpler risk assessments using the SIRA method. Accurate assessment of hazards (whether using SIRA or one of the older methods such as IWRAP) requires evaluating meteorological visibility in the zone. Real-time data provides a mechanism to determine when current conditions are outside of the parameters of an existing risk assessment, in a way that prediction models simply cannot.

While relatively recent in our industry, using high-resolution data to shift from static planning to dynamic orchestration is well proven elsewhere. In IT security this is known as Information Security Continuous Monitoring, and it is central to the Risk Management Framework adopted over the past decade. And in airport operations the Continuous Descent Approach (also known as Optimized Profile Descent) has been used to improve noise pollution as well as fuel efficiency and scheduling. Port 4.0 initiatives (named after the broader Industry 4.0 approach) hinge on adapting these lessons from other industries to the unique challenges of the maritime environment.

As the marine safety mission becomes more complex (with more ships, more transits, more uncertainty, and narrower margins for error), tighter collaboration between tugboat operators, pilots and port operators is paramount. This collaboration, whether in a formal approach such as PortCDM (i.e., information sharing in real time) or more informally, requires the right objective data to achieve the goal of improved situational awareness. Recent Canadian National Transportation Safety Board Marine Accident reports such as the just-completed review of the 2019 Collision between Liquefied Gas Carrier Genesis River and Voyager Tow highlight the way these contributing factors (larger vessels, more frequent passings, changing conditions and time pressure) could have been comprehensively addressed through a Continuous Risk Assessment Program. Port operators have much to gain from adopting this same approach.

Real-time data unlocks just-intime arrivals

Perhaps the biggest opportunity for advancing the state of the art in Port management lies in redefining where the Port begins. Just-in-time arrival management systems, such as the Vessel Arrival System pioneered in Newcastle, Australia, have been shown to deliver best-in-class financial gains as well as to improve marine safety. Much of this improvement comes in the form of reduced fuel usage, which also reduces greenhouse gas emissions — an important side benefit when we consider the IMO target of reducing the maritime industry’s carbon footprint by 40 per cent by 2030. The key to making a Vessel Arrival System possible is accurate and timely sea-state data for a large portion of the approach area.

The bonus — always ready for expansion

While the forecast demand for port capacity is well understood, the actual green-light event for a terminal expansion project only happens when the perfect storm of political will, available capital, and regulatory approval all come together. Port operators can capture the power in these stormy moments by being in a state of readiness. Gathering the high-resolution data needed to support engineering work is a valuable side-effect of the Continuous Marine Safety approach. Not only are you always open for business, but you are always ready for growth.

For more about MarineLabs, see their New Member Profile on Page 48.

Dr. Scott Beatty is the CEO of MarineLabs, a former coastal engineering consultant and a pioneer of Continuous Marine Safety. He sits on the board of Association of British Columbia Marine Industries (ABCMI), and his award-winning approach to real-time ocean condition monitoring has been widely covered by trade publications as well as the scientific community. MarineLabs are the makers of CoastAware(™), the world’s first real-time Coastal Intelligence platform.