Safe maritime operations under extreme conditions: the Arctic case

Maritime traffic in the Arctic region is rapidly increasing. But there has been a huge increase in marine casualties in this region due to its extremely harsh environment and the severe safety challenges for ships’ navigation teams.

SEDNA will develop an innovative and integrated risk-based approach to safe Arctic navigation, ship design and operation, to enable European maritime interests to confidently fully embrace the Arctic’s significant and growing shipping opportunities, while safeguarding its natural environment.

More specifically SEDNA will create and demonstrate the improved safety outcomes of:

  1. The Safe Arctic Bridge, a human-centered operational environment for the ice-going ship bridge using augmented reality technology to provide improved situational awareness and decision making whilst enabling integration with new key information layers developed by the project using innovative big data management techniques.
  2. Integrated dynamic meteorological and oceanographic data with real time ship monitoring and ice movement predictions to provide reliable decision making for safe and efficient Arctic voyage optimisation.
  3. Anti-icing engineering solutions, using nature inspired approaches, to prevent ice formation on vessels, eliminating ice as a ship stability and working-environment hazard.
  4. Risk-based design framework to ensure that vessel design is connected to all key hazards of ship operation in the Arctic. The holistic treatment of the ship design, operating regime and environment will improve safety and minimise impact over the entire life cycle.
  5. A CEN Workshop Agreement on a process to systematically address safety during bunkering of methanol as a marine fuel along with safety zone guidance for three bunkering concepts: Truck to Ship, Shore to Ship and Ship to Ship.

To maximise impact, SEDNA will provide formal inputs to international regulatory regimes regarding regulation adaptation requirements for its safety solutions.

More information about the project can be found at the project website.