Strategic and Operational Risk Management for Wintertime Maritime Transportation System

STORMWINDS addresses the risks of winter navigation in the Northern Baltic, and provides analyses and technologies aimed at accident prevention and response. The project will provide recommendations to enhance cross border, cross-sector vessel traffic control and emergency response, propose a safety management model for Vessel Traffic Services, develop novel and improved operational situational awareness tools, develop a risk-informed pollution response fleet management model for wintertime conditions and develop methods for ship routing in ice and enhanced situational awareness in ice navigation. The project contributes towards the objective of reducing the number of maritime accidents and particularly the action ''Winter Navigation'' of PA SAFE. It contributes to other actions like developing co-operation in maritime surveillance and information exchange and improve safety of navigation by means of e-Navigation. The project involves partners from Estonia, Finland, Russia and Sweden. BONUS STORMWINDS addresses three key research themes. The first research theme addresses accident prevention through the development and application of systems-theoretical accident theories to the vessel control system. This is manifested in two development paths. The first concerns the development and application of a new framework for maritime risk management, linking systems-theoretic accident theories to maritime spatial planning tools and processes. The second development path builds on systems-theoretic accident theories to develop an indicators-based safety management model for Vessel Traffic Services (VTS). A second research theme addresses accident prevention through the development of e-navigation services, focusing on information and route planning services to support voyage planning in sea ice environments. One development concerns methods for classifying satellite images in terms of expected ship performance. Another development concerns a method for optimal routing in actual sea ice environment, accounting for both efficiency and safety. These methods can be implemented in onboard navigation equipment as an additional information layer and used in operational planning. A third research theme addresses pollution response in winter conditions. A risk management model is developed to support policy decisions related to the organization of the pollution response fleet. Questions such as the appropriate number, location and equipment of response vessels are addressed through a risk analysis which integrates navigational accident and traffic system analyses, future sea ice climate scenarios and accidental spill and recovery modeling. Another development path addresses improvements in situation awareness tools for use in accident response operations. Several web-based applications are developed for improved tracking of oil spills in sea ice environments and for integrating information services relevant for operational decision making in spill response operations. Thus, STORMWINDS aims to advance maritime risk analysis and management, taking an interdisciplinary approach to improve maritime safety.