Improving Safety at Sea by Dynamically Assigning a 3D Safety Zone around a Ship

Sea routes along the Norwegian coast see an increase in transport of hazardous goods. In other areas of the world ship traffic is, however, much more dense (British Channel or Asia). Although for safety and economical reasons hazardous goods are increasin gly transported by sea the risks for collisions and groundings due to heavy traffic increases like wise. The project idea is that many accidents might be avoided if a system automatically assigns a safety zone around the ship to guarantee non-collision or halting within that zone. The air transport industry has introduced a similar safety zone concept a long time ago, and it has proven to be very safe and reliable over many decades. If similar concepts can be developed for ship traffic a corresponding saf ety gain could be harvested. Similar to air planes a safety area is defined around a ship. The minimum size of this safety area is constant and is a function of the ship?s static properties such as: * Cargo type * Manoeuvrability * Engine (two engine ship is more controllable than a single engine ship) * Training level of crew Further out at sea the safety region ship will be equal to this miniumum, constant size. However, closer to shore and especially in narrow and shallow waters the safety size will be dynamically adapted and updated according to: * local depth, * environmental factors like wind, waves, current, visibility, ice condition, icing * hazardous weather * distance from valuable onshore factors (e.g. bird colony) This suggested safety con cept will not reduce the consequences of accidents but rather aim to avoid them in the first place. Various alarm functions may be attached to these safety sectors that may warn the ship pilot that two safety areas are starting to to touch or even trigger an automatic halt of the ship in case these safety regions overlap to much. Such a system may be utilised by a ship control centre, but also by the ship itself to monitor nearby ship traffic.