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Special Issue "Marine Navigation and Safety at Sea"

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A special issue of Journal of Marine Science and Engineering (ISSN 2077-1312). This special issue belongs to the section "Ocean Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (5 May 2023) | Viewed by 15687

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Jasna Prpic-Orsic

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Guest Editor

Faculty of Engineering, University of Rijeka, Rijeka 51000, Croatia
Interests: navigation; ships; naval architecture; marine safety

Dr. Luca Braidotti

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Guest Editor

Department of Engineering and Architecture, University of Treiste, Trieste, Italy
Interests: progressive flooding simulations; ship safety; ship stability; decision-support systems; ship concept design; software development

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Maritime transport is one of the pillars of the current globalization process. Presently, about 90% of goods are transported by ships and the transport demand is constantly growing. Besides, after a fall due to the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, sea passenger transport is now recovering, posing new challenges regarding passenger safety. In recent decades, increasing demand led to the growth of vessel size and the need for port infrastructure upgrades. New challenges have been introduced regarding ship design and operation, navigation planning and monitoring, port scheduling and resource allocation.

In this contest, navigation safety has become even more important. The application of information technology (IT) together with automatic identification systems has improved monitoring capabilities, opening new applications to improve navigation safety, ranging from collision avoidance to weather routing, better planning of traffic in critical spots onboard, or onshore decision-support systems to prevent or handle emergencies. In this process, data collected by onboard sensors can also play a key role, leading to the monitoring of the ship’s performance and its machinery. All these data can be used to develop complex models, including ship digital twins, which can be used, for instance, to identify anomalies and reduce the occurrence of accidents through predictive maintenance. Data collected onboard can also be used to develop more robust ship designs capable of implementing the most advanced safety standards or to better plan ship operations.

This Special Issue aims to share relevant scientific work focused on everything from large-scale patterns to detailed aspects and case studies, encouraging the publication of new emerging information that contributes to the knowledge in the field of navigation in general, focusing on but not limited to safety issues related to the sea transport of goods and passengers.

Dr. Jasna Prpic-Orsic
Dr. Luca Braidotti
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Journal of Marine Science and Engineering is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2200 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

Navigation
Sea transport
Ship Safety
Navigation Safety
Decision-Support Systems

Published Papers (14 papers)

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Research

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Open AccessArticle

Ship Flooding Time Prediction Based on Composite Neural Network

Ze Li

Dongmei Yang

and

Guisheng Yin

J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2023, 11(6), 1123; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse11061123 - 26 May 2023

Viewed by 204

Abstract

When a ship sailing on the sea encounters flooding events, quickly predicting the flooding time of the compartments in the damaged area is beneficial to making evacuation decisions and reducing losses. At present, decision-makers obtain flooding data through various sensors arranged on board to predict the time of compartment flooding. These data help with the calculation of the flooding time in emergency situations. This paper proposes a new approach to obtaining the compartment flooding time. Specifically in damage scenarios, based on Convolutional Neural Network and Recurrent Neural Network (CNN-RNN), using a composite neural network framework estimates the time when the compartment’s flooding water reaches the target height. The input of the neural network is the flooding images of the damaged compartment. Transfer learning is utilized in the paper. The ResNet18 model in Pytorch is used to extract the spatial information from the flooding images. The Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) model is then applied to predict when the compartment flooding water reaches the target height. Experimental results show that, for the damaged compartment, the flooding time predicted by the neural network is 85% accurate while the others’ accuracy is more than 91%. Intuitively, when it comes to the actual flooding event, the composite neural network’s average prediction error for compartment flooding time is approximately 1 min. To summarize, these results suggest that the composite neural network proposed above can provide flooding information to assist decision-makers in emergency situations. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Navigation and Safety at Sea)

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Open AccessArticle

Ship Anomalous Behavior Detection Using Clustering and Deep Recurrent Neural Network

and

J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2023, 11(4), 763; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse11040763 - 31 Mar 2023

Viewed by 760

Abstract

In this study, we propose a real-time ship anomaly detection method driven by Automatic Identification System (AIS) data. The method uses ship trajectory clustering classes as a normal model and a deep learning algorithm as an anomaly detection tool. The method is divided into three main steps: (1) quality maintenance of the original AIS data, (2) extraction of normal ship trajectory clusters using Density-Based Spatial Clustering of Applications with Noise (DBSCAN), in which a segmented improved Dynamic Time Warping (DTW) algorithm is used to measure the degree of trajectory similarity, (3) the clustering results are used as a normative model to train a Bi-directional Gated Recurrent Unit (BiGRU) recurrent neural network, which is used as a trajectory predictor to achieve real-time ship anomaly detection. Experiments were conducted using real AIS data from the port of Tianjin, China. The experimental results are manifold. Firstly, the data pre-processing process effectively improves the quality of raw AIS data. Secondly, the ship trajectory clustering model can accurately classify the traffic flow of different modes in the sea area. Moreover, the trajectory prediction result of the BiGRU model has the smallest error with the actual ship trajectory and has a better trajectory prediction performance compared with the Long Short-Term Memory Network model (LSTM) and Gated Recurrent Unit (GRU). In the final anomaly detection experiment, the detection accuracy and timeliness of the BiGRU model are also higher than LSTM and GRU. Therefore, the proposed method can achieve effective and timely detection of ship anomalous behaviors in terms of position, heading and speed during ship navigation, which provides insight to enhance the intelligence of marine traffic supervision and improve the safety of marine navigation. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Navigation and Safety at Sea)

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Open AccessArticle

Bulkheads’ Position Optimisation in the Concept Design of Ships under Deterministic Rules

Luca Braidotti

and

Jasna Prpić-Oršić

J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2023, 11(3), 546; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse11030546 - 03 Mar 2023

Viewed by 483

Abstract

The position of the transverse bulkheads is the most important aspect in determining the internal subdivision of the ship and has a strong impact on the general arrangement, weight distribution and capacity of the ship. Nowadays, deterministic rules still apply to various types of ships such as gas carriers, naval ships, icebreakers, etc. For these vessels a new floodable length can be defined as the extent of the ship that can be flooded, still assuring compliance with the damage stability criteria. The main objective of this paper is using the floodable lengths to optimize the position of bulkheads. The proposed methodology maximises the margin between the floodable length and the actual flooded length, which consists of two lost contiguous compartments. This method, applicable in the framework of multi-attribute decision-making techniques for ship concept design, allows identification of the minimum number of bulkheads a ship requires, quantification, and maximisation of the safety margin for compliance with deterministic damage stability criteria. This margin ensures maximum flexibility for changes that may be required in the next design phases. The proposed method, based on a multi-stage optimization, is tested on a compressed natural gas carrier to define the minimum number and position of the transverse bulkheads dividing the cargo holds. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Navigation and Safety at Sea)

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Open AccessArticle

A Study on Grid-Cell-Type Maritime Traffic Distribution Analysis Based on AIS Data for Establishing a Coastal Maritime Transportation Network

and

J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2023, 11(2), 354; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse11020354 - 05 Feb 2023

Viewed by 748

Abstract

Recently, marine development plans such as offshore wind farms and marina port facilities have been established to use Korean coastal waters, and research on the development of operational ships such as autonomous ships and water-surface flying ships is being rapidly promoted. Since the marine traffic in Korean coastal waters is expected to increase, the government intends to construct a coastal maritime transportation network that connects Korean coastal waters to guarantee safe ship navigation. Therefore, this study used automatic-identification-system data analysis to obtain quantitative evaluation results on maritime traffic distribution characteristics and utilization levels for the entire Korean coastal waters in grid cell for greater consistency and compatibility. The characteristics of marine traffic distribution at a certain site in coastal Korean waters can be quantitatively examined using the findings of this study, and they may be used as grid-cell-type data-based information. Moreover, the vessel traffic index allows for extensive research while quickly understanding the present level of use of the passing ships by the sea area. In this regard, the findings of this study are expected to be useful for the future development of maritime transportation networks in Korean coastal waters. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Navigation and Safety at Sea)

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Open AccessArticle

Perception of Autonomy and the Role of Experience within the Maritime Industry

and

J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2023, 11(2), 258; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse11020258 - 21 Jan 2023

Viewed by 936

Abstract

The seafaring occupation will soon evolve as human operators transition to a more supervisory role for autonomous systems onboard. Therefore, gaining a greater understanding of the mindset that officers have towards the world of autonomy will aid the maritime industry by developing a baseline for future navigational training. This paper examines the perceptions and attitudes of 100 navigational seafaring participants of varying navigational ranks and levels of seagoing experience. The aim of the study was to identify the perceptions and self-conscious trust that current seafarers have towards automated and future autonomous systems. Participants were issued a situational judgement test comprising of three questions, allowing them to assess and respond to a hazardous scenario. The results of the study found that seafarers are receptive towards the introduction of autonomous shipping. Furthermore, the participants showed an awareness of what autonomous shipping would mean for the maritime industry. However, concerns remain about the responsibility and safety of the vessel in the event of the introduction of an unmanned vessel. Moreover, when comparing opinions and trust levels among the cohort of ranks, it was found that participants of a higher rank had a similar outlook towards autonomy to that of the less experienced groups. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Navigation and Safety at Sea)

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Open AccessArticle

Effects of Forward Speed and Wave Height on the Seakeeping Performance of a Small Fishing Vessel

Namkyun Im

and

Sangmin Lee

J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2022, 10(12), 1936; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10121936 - 07 Dec 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 763

Abstract

The effects of wave height and forward speed on the seakeeping performance of a small fishing vessel in irregular waves are evaluated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The wave height effect changed linearly for a forward speed in the head sea and beam sea. In the stationary state, the heave and roll motions attributed to the wave height appear nonlinearly. The effect of the speed showed a non-linear shape wherein the heave motion became larger with an increase in the forward speed in beam sea. The seakeeping performance of pitch motion is greatly improved at forward speed rather than in a stationary state. The seakeeping performance of the roll motion is more dangerous than the pitch motion, regardless of wave height and vessel speed. The mean roll period in irregular waves is obtained through this study, and it is longer than the natural roll period in still water. It is necessary to be careful as the probability of exceeding the limit is high and GM is decreased in transverse waves. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Navigation and Safety at Sea)

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Open AccessArticle

Grouping Pilots’ Maneuvering Types According to Berthing Velocity Using Agglomerative Clustering Algorithm

and

J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2022, 10(10), 1452; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10101452 - 08 Oct 2022

Viewed by 777

Abstract

A pilot guides a ship through a safe waterway based on extensive experience and knowledge of the region for piloting so that the ship can berth quickly and safely. There are insufficient studies on pilots who play crucial roles in pilotage, and most of the available studies have focused on psychological stress or tension. In this study, we group pilots through quantitative analysis of data to help in the safety management of pilots. In particular, berthing velocity and berthing energy were employed as basic data, and the mean and standard deviation values for each pilot after preprocessing were used for analysis. As a result of using the agglomerative clustering algorithm, we could group pilots into three types: cautious, efficient, and hazardous. Further, analysis of variance (ANOVA) showed that there was a significant difference between the cautious and hazardous types. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Navigation and Safety at Sea)

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Open AccessArticle

Numerical Study of Scale Effects on Open Water Propeller Performance

and

J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2022, 10(8), 1132; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10081132 - 17 Aug 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 972

Abstract

The present study aims to investigate the scale effects of the open water propeller performance using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). The results are presented for the propeller which was previously 3D scanned and digitized. The results obtained using two turbulence models within the numerical simulations are compared. The verification study is conducted to assess the numerical uncertainty and thus obtain the optimal grid size for the numerical simulations. A transition model is used at the model scale to account for the partially laminar flow. The propeller is then scaled, and numerical simulations are performed to assess the scale effects on the open water performance of the considered propeller. The results demonstrate the significant scale effects on open water characteristics however, scale effects are considerably lower when the transition model is applied within the numerical simulations at the model scale. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Navigation and Safety at Sea)

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Open AccessArticle

Design and Safety Assessment of Recommended Route off the Western Coast of Izu O Shima Island

Rina Miyake

and

Hiroko Itoh

J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2022, 10(8), 1060; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10081060 - 02 Aug 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 782

Abstract

Ship routeing systems (e.g., traffic separation schemes) have been established worldwide to ensure ship traffic safety. There are no specific measures to establish an effective ship route. We have previously proposed a method to design and assess the route comparison with the present traffic flow in the interest to establish an effective ship routeing system, particularly for recommended routes. The method consists mainly of the following procedures: understanding the existing phenomena and the issues in the target area by analyzing target traffic flow; designing safety measures; assessing the safety measures; and determining the optimal safety measure. This method was used to design and assess the recommended route off the western coast of Izu O Shima Island. This route has been in service since January 2018. The purpose of this study is to validate the proposed method. First, the technical details of the method are described. An automatic identification system (AIS) observation was conducted before and after the implementation to validate the effectiveness of the recommended route for reducing collisions. The results show that the recommended route effectively reduces the risk of collisions. More specifically, the proposed method was found to be useful when establishing an effective recommended route. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Navigation and Safety at Sea)

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Open AccessArticle

A Real-Time Ship Detector via a Common Camera

and

J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2022, 10(8), 1043; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10081043 - 29 Jul 2022

Viewed by 1087

Abstract

Advanced radars and satellites, suitable for remote monitoring, inappropriately reach the economical requirements of short-range detection. Compared with far-sightedness skills, common visible-light sensors offer more ample features conducive to distinguishing the classes. Therefore, ship detection based on visible-light cameras should cooperate with remote detection technologies. However, compared with detectors applied in inland transportation, the lack of fast ship detectors, detecting multiple ship classes, is non-negligible. To fill this gap, we propose a real-time ship detector based on fast U-Net and remapping attention (FRSD) via a common camera. The fast U-Net offered compresses features in the channel dimension to decrease the number of training parameters. The remapping attention introduced boosts the performance in various rain–fog weather conditions while maintaining the real-time speed. The ship dataset proposed contains more than 20,000 samples, alleviating the lack of ship datasets containing various classes. Data augmentation of the cross-background is especially proposed to further promote the diversity of the detecting background. In addition, the rain–fog dataset proposed, containing more than 500 rain–fog images, simulates various marine rain–fog scenarios and soaks the testing image to validate the robustness of ship detectors. Experiments demonstrate that FRSD performs relatively robustly and detects 9 classes with an mAP of more than 83%, reaching a state-of-the-art level. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Navigation and Safety at Sea)

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Open AccessArticle

Analysis of Thermal Characteristics of MEMS Sensors for Measuring the Rolling Period of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships

Hee-Jin Lee

and

Deuk-Jin Park

J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2022, 10(7), 859; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10070859 - 23 Jun 2022

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 885

Abstract

Recently, with the emergence of maritime autonomous surface ships (MASS), ensuring seaworthiness has increased with the operation of MASS. Ship stability is important for safety, and technical methods for controlling a ship’s motion are required to evaluate the stability. A ship’s rolling period is estimated using microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) sensors to measure the ship’s metacentric height. However, weather changes (e.g., temperature) are drastic due to various marine environments in the sea. Hence, it is necessary to analyze MEMS sensors’ thermal characteristics for applying them to MASS. This study aims to analyze the thermal characteristics of a siX-axis MEMS sensor for its application in MASS. The experiments analyzed measurement errors and noise at six steps in the range of 25–75 °C in which the MEMS sensor can be operated. The experimental results showed that the gyroscope’s thermal error and MEMS sensor’s noise level were much larger than those of the accelerometer and the respective thermal error values along the Z-axis of the accelerometer and gyroscope were the most stable compared to those along the other axes. The findings can be applied to a measurement method of the stability of MASS employing MEMS sensors in navigation equipment. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Navigation and Safety at Sea)

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Open AccessArticle

TAR-Based Domino Effect Model for Maritime Accidents

Xiao-Fei Ma

Guo-You Shi

and

Zheng-Jiang Liu

J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2022, 10(6), 788; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10060788 - 08 Jun 2022

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1028

Abstract

To thoroughly figure out the distribution and formation mechanism of maritime accidents, this study proposes a domino effect model based on temporal association rules (TAR) to analyze and mine the secrets behind the accident—the formation mechanism of accident chains. In this study, the British Marine Accident Investigation Branch (MAIB) accident reports are gathered and examined. Of which, Ro-Ro ships, general cargo ships, and container ships are the top three ship types discussed. The domino effect model is applied to the detected accidents, yielding a series of results. These show that the resulting values from unsafe working practices to death while working are very high and are 8.622 (Ro-Ro ship), 5.920 (General cargo ship) and 6.441 (Container ship), respectively. It indicates that unsafe working practices are very prone to accidents involving death while working. The approach is ubiquitous, and the accident chains compiled from them may be widely employed in marine accident prevention and proactive safety management. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Navigation and Safety at Sea)

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Open AccessArticle

Energetic and Ecological Effects of the Slow Steaming Application and Gasification of Container Ships

and

J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2022, 10(5), 703; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10050703 - 20 May 2022

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 1215

Abstract

One of the short-term operational measures for fuel savings and reducing CO₂ emissions from ships at sea is sailing at reduced speed, i.e., slow steaming, while the gasification of the ship represents an important mid-term technical measure. In this study, the energetic and ecological benefits of slow steaming and gasification are studied for a container ship sailing between Shanghai and Hamburg. Resistance and propulsion characteristics in calm water are calculated using computational fluid dynamics based on the viscous flow theory for a full-scale ship, while the added resistance in waves is calculated by applying potential flow theory. The propeller operating point is determined for the design and slow steaming speeds at sea states with the highest probability of occurrence through the investigated sailing route. Thereafter, the fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions are calculated for a selected dual fuel engine in fuel oil- and gas-supplying modes complying with IMO Tier II and Tier III requirements. The results demonstrate a significant reduction in fuel consumption and CO₂ emissions for various slow steaming speeds compared to the design speed at different sea states, and for the gasification of a container ship. For realistic weather conditions through the investigated route, the potential reduction in CO₂ emissions per year could be up to 11.66 kt/year for fuel oil mode and 8.53 kt/year for gas-operating mode. CO₂ emission reduction per year due to gasification under realistic weather conditions could be up to 22 kt/year. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Navigation and Safety at Sea)

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Review

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Open AccessReview

Digitalization in Maritime Transport and Seaports: Bibliometric, Content and Thematic Analysis

and

J. Mar. Sci. Eng. 2022, 10(4), 486; https://doi.org/10.3390/jmse10040486 - 01 Apr 2022

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 3393

Abstract

In this paper, a bibliometric, content and thematic analysis of digitalization in maritime transport and seaports was performed. The research was primarily motivated by the scarcity of similar works offering a comprehensive and recent literature analysis, the advancements of the maritime digitalization itself, and its influence on all related processes. The initial investigation phase considered 8178 publications, leading through the research steps to the final inclusion of 280 papers, the thematic and content analysis of which were performed using various bibliometric tools. The research encompassed various criteria, ranging through databases, keywords, topics, research areas and others. The resulting concept map emphasized the main concepts that digitalization in maritime transport relies on, or strives towards. The aim of the study was to address the fundamental research questions, with the tendency to define the main key points in the current maritime transport and seaport digitalization process. It can be concluded that an increasing number of authors recognize the importance of new digital technologies in maritime transport and seaports. However, with new digital technologies come specific risks such as spoofing or data manipulation that need to be further analyzed. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Marine Navigation and Safety at Sea)

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