Overall objectives of the collaborative project

In the planned joint project, an online module is to be developed which, on the basis of the AIS data of ships and associated information on passenger capacities and crew sizes, can display for any sea area how many people are or were at sea there at the moment or in a period to be specified. Depending on the customer and the field of application, additional information is to be made available, e.g. which destination these ships have, when they are to arrive in which port or where these ships and thus the people on them come from.

Results of the Institute for Safety Engineering / Ship Safety e.V.:

Needs assessment

On the basis of a questionnaire developed in the project, the functionalities and application scenarios desired by the various potential users (Mecklenburg-Vorpommern Tourism Association, DGzRS, Rostock Port, ...) for the system to be developed were recorded and evaluated in interviews. It turned out that the envisaged person forecast is particularly interesting for tourism companies. There were requests for additional information about the expected flow of people, e.g. in relation to the age of ship passengers.

Use scenarios

In recent years, the media have been showing increasing resentment about the ever-increasing streams of visitors to certain cities and regions around the world. One example is the Italian lagoon city of Venice, which has often been in the media spotlight. But also cities like Amsterdam, Palma de Mallorca or Key West in Florida - USA see themselves increasingly overrun by cruise tourists and fear, among other things, environmental damage. National authorities are therefore increasingly imposing restrictions on the number of tourists. The restrictions on passenger shipping that are currently in force or are expected in the future have been compiled in a clear chart.

In the future, the system developed in the project can help both shipping companies and land-based industries to integrate these rules into route planning in good time. It is also conceivable to establish a booking system for regions with passenger restrictions.

Legal examination of copyright, exploitation and dissemination rights of the data

According to the Ordinance on Conditions of Call, ships calling at the internal waters of the Federal Republic of Germany are obliged to report the total number of persons on board to the competent authorities. The collection of all data subject to reporting is carried out via the National Single Window System, which is used on behalf of the Federal Transport Administration, e.g. by the port offices in the respective municipalities. Data in itself is free of any rights. There is no ownership of data, neither research data, personal data nor geodata. The collected data in itself, e.g. in the joint project the collection of numbers of persons, accordingly does not constitute a work protected by copyright. Only when the collected data is integrated into a database, visualised, processed and / or evaluated, does the data become a work worthy of copyright protection. This fact applies universally to any kind of data, regardless of the effort that the data generation may have required or the intended use. However, if one understands "data" to mean content that contains, for example, images or text that goes beyond mere information, then property rights may exist. This does not apply to the numbers of persons recorded, as this is purely an indication of quantity that can be determined by simple counting.

Despite their general lack of protection under copyright law, the use of data can be subject to restrictions. On the one hand, this applies to personal data, the collection and processing of which is regulated by the Data Protection Ordinance. In addition, data may contain business secrets, the use of which may also be subject to legal restrictions. In the case of project-relevant data, the shipping companies would therefore have to prove which data, if any, are to be classified as trade secrets, so that use can be bound to certain rules. In order not to violate data protection rights, the data used in the project is based exclusively on non-personal data. Anonymised data are not considered personal data! The anonymised collection and processing of information on gender or age is therefore also possible, as long as the data collected does not allow any conclusions to be drawn about a specific person.

Overall objectives of the collaborative project

The aim of the project is the software-based implementation and graphic representation of a real-time-based forecast of maritime traffic for up to 14 days in advance with a probability of approx. 90-70 % (decreasing with requests extending further and further into the future). On a generally accessible online platform (possibly subject to a fee), it should be possible to query the expected shipping traffic at a specific time within the coming days and in a selectable sea area via a user-friendly interface. It should also be possible to limit the information to certain types of ships, e.g. tankers or cruise ships, by means of a filter.

Results of the Institute for Safety Engineering / Ship Safety e.V.:

Needs assessment and user analysis

On the basis of a questionnaire developed in the project, the functionalities and application scenarios desired by the various potential users (shipping companies, authorities, logistics companies, insurance companies, ...) for the system to be developed were recorded and evaluated in interviews. Important application scenarios emerged. For example, in the course of the planned construction and operation of LNG bunkering stations in a port, it could be important to know when a particularly large number of ships with dangerous goods on board are to be expected in the coming days, as dangerous goods loading and LNG bunkering operations may not be carried out at the same time. The forecasting system would significantly support effective planning here.

Preparation of traffic and logistics data

In order to identify certain patterns in the traffic and logistics data, investigations were carried out into typical structures in maritime traffic, including identifying all routes in RORO traffic in the North & Baltic Sea and in the Mediterranean. In the process, 939 ferry routes were registered with the associated LOCODES of the ports connected by the ferry route. Knowledge of these routes facilitates the assignment of possible destination ports.

Worldwide container traffic takes place to a large extent according to stringent timetables on defined lines. In the project, more than 4,100 container routes were identified, which are served by approx. 116 shipping companies. The container routes identified were made available to the project partner JCS. Conversely, selected routes were compared with the LINESCAPE data of container ships provided by Jakota Cruise Systems. It turned out that the routes could also be identified in these data, but that there are often deviations, e.g. due to waiting times before ports or difficult weather conditions. The resulting delays can amount to several days. It must therefore be assumed that a real-time-based maritime traffic forecast of container ships on a purely schedule basis can be a basis, but will be too inaccurate. The integration of actual route data is necessary.

Algorithms for next-port targeting

The system for maritime traffic forecasting developed in the project is essentially based on the evaluation of the next port of call indicated in the AIS. This is indicated by the crew in a defined format in the form of a LOCODE. The design and structure of LOCODES were analysed in detail in the project and presented in a diagram. UN/LOCODEs typically consist of five letters. The first two letters are the country code, followed by three letters for the specific location, e.g. DE RSK stands for the port of Rostock in Germany. Errors often occur during the entry on board, which prevents the determination of the actually meant destination port and thus makes maritime traffic forecasting more difficult. One of the main tasks of the sub-project was therefore to create meaningful algorithms for assigning incorrectly written codes to those actually meant. As a basis for this work, the project partner Jakota Cruise Systems provided the ISV with a file containing over 60,000 unassignable destination entries. In this original file, a frequency analysis was first carried out to narrow down the data to be evaluated. For further processing, only the unassignable target entries that occurred five times or more were taken into account. For the remaining 15,000 or so, the next step was to separate out "destination entries" that did not describe any ports at all but referred to certain situations on board, such as "armed guards on board", which were included in a separate database.

The data records to be evaluated could thus be reduced to approx. 7500, which were distributed over approx. 730 different false entries. These were assigned to the ports actually meant on the basis of historical route data of the ships that had entered this incorrect information into the AIS, among other things.

Another important approach for this work was the assignment of sub-ports to the parent ports. Often only the entire port area has a single LOCODE, but in the destination entry a sub-port (e.g. oil port) or individual berth is specified by the crew, resulting in a currently unidentifiable destination entry. In order to obtain a better overview here, maps were produced for Rostock and Hamburg with the allocation of the individual sub-ports.

The resulting "translation table" was made available to the project partner JCS for integration into the self-learning algorithm.

Even though it is desired in AIS to indicate the next port by means of its LOCODE, it is more common for ship crews to enter the clear name of the port as the next destination. Since there are various ports with the same name worldwide, such as Vancouver, Sydney or around 80 others, confusion can occur. A list of ports with the same name was created and the respective location and special features of the ports were checked, e.g. whether it is a seaport, a marina or an inland port. With the help of exclusion criteria, an assignment of the actually meant port can be significantly improved, since, for example, it is not to be expected that a large crude oil tanker will enter a port without an oil terminal.

Overall objectives of the collaborative project

The overall objective of the project is to increase the safety of firefighters fighting hazards on board seagoing vessels in ports. Unlike in the case of accidents at sea, the shore-based fire brigades are deployed in the case of accidents on ships in ports. However, these fire brigades only have a basic nautical training. In principle, it is hardly possible to transfer land-based measures and systems to ship-based hazard control. The reasons for this are the very different spatial conditions on different classes of ships and the diversity of cargoes. In addition, there are situation-dependent conditions such as the manoeuvrability and stability of the ship (e.g. in the event of the ingress of extinguishing water), the steel environment, which has special properties, e.g. with regard to the development of heat, and the fact that, unlike in the case of a house fire, emergency forces have to make their way to the source of the fire in the opposite direction to the development of smoke when fighting the danger in the ship's hull. This creates an increased risk for the emergency services. In order to avoid damages and impairments, the project aims to increase the safety, efficiency and effectiveness of the emergency services with new technological developments. For this purpose, an innovative overall technological concept is being developed, which is composed of individual components. A constantly updating situation display system will be designed for the fire brigade's on-site operations management, which will be available to the fire brigade's operations management. On the one hand, depending on the type of ship, this is fed from a database to be developed with basic information such as fire-fighting equipment and safety systems available on board as well as the fire-fighting plan of the respective ship, technical ship data and access possibilities. On the other hand, it processes ship-specific cargo and dangerous goods data as well as passenger lists.

Results of the Institute for Safety Engineering / Ship Safety e.V.:

Analysis of shipwrecks, scenarios

In order to narrow down the type of information required, an analysis of shipping accidents in port areas was first carried out. The period under investigation was 2000-2016. Reports in the media as well as investigation reports by the competent authorities in Germany (BSU) and other countries were evaluated for the list. The data was classified according to the type of accident (fire, water pollution, leakage of hazardous substances, industrial accident, water ingress) and relevant aspects (type of ship, type of cargo, alarm chain, cause of the accident, measures, problems during operation, damage). A total of 390 accidents were recorded, most of which were incidents involving water pollution. In these incidents, the intervention of the fire brigades is usually not associated with an operation on board, so they were not examined in more detail in EFAS. A more detailed evaluation was made of 45 incidents that appeared to be of particular relevance. Based on the accident analysis, the scenarios "fire" and "hazardous substance leakage" were identified as particularly frequent on the one hand and as particularly relevant on the other.

Analysis of training content

A survey was conducted to find out which topics the fire brigades think should be trained more in the future. A comprehensive questionnaire was developed for the survey. The results showed that especially issues related to water ingress, evacuation of persons and the use of alternative fuels should be taught more frequently and intensively in further training courses. The reading and evaluation of ship plans for a quick preparation of bearings and planning of measures was also assessed as a necessary need for further training, similarly to questions related to communication between all parties involved and maritime English.

Development of teaching materials

Within the project, the "Handbook for fire brigades - emergency management on seagoing vessels" was produced - a compendium for fire brigades on the specific conditions on board and the special features of the safety systems on different types of ships. The book was presented to the Havariekommando, where it was rated as very good teaching material.

Furthermore, a deck model was made for the illustrative presentation of ship plans and for use in the preparation of situation pictures. An accident can thus be quickly illustrated and possible attack routes for the emergency forces can be discussed using the model. At the same time, the deck model can also be used for simulation games. For use in further education courses, an LNG bunker simulation model was built for practical practice of the courses of action before, during and after the bunkering of liquefied natural gas.

Overall objectives of the collaborative project

The transport sector employs over 10 million people in the EU. At the same time, transport is a social sector that is developing rapidly and is highly influenced by automation, electrification and greening, and therefore faces problems in filling its different areas with adequate and qualified personnel. This fact makes changes in training and education content, curricula, tools and methods absolutely imperative, incorporating lifelong learning aspects for professionals in all transport sectors. The vision of SKILLFUL is to identify the skills and competences needed by the transport workers of the future and to define the training methods and tools to fulfil them. For the above trends, employability through SKILLFUL will be closely linked to the future requirements for transport occupations for all transport modes and multimodal chains and for all levels/types of workers, while including and integrating all training modes in a balanced way.

Overall objectives of the collaborative project

Major emergencies in the maritime environment can occur at any time and affect a large number of people. While there are now tried and tested operational concepts for complex damage situations on land, this is not the case for the sea and port area.

A mass casualty incident at sea presents many special circumstances compared to land, such as difficult access for rescuers, distance, limited space, limited means of transport, especially in severe weather conditions.

Results of the Institute for Safety Engineering / Ship Safety e.V.:

Within the sub-project of the joint project KOMPASS, the Institute for Safety Technology / Ship Safety e.V. has developed and tested various approaches for making the management of an MANV at sea more effective, among other things with regard to

• Integration of the topic of MANV at sea into the medical refresher courses for ship's officers.
• the integration of offshore installations into an evacuation concept
• the creation and training of MANV concepts on passenger ships
• the expansion of the medical equipment on board specifically for MANVs

The concepts and results developed represent basic approaches that can be adapted for the concrete ships or authorities. An important project result is the general sensitisation of stakeholders to the issue.

Overall objectives of the collaborative project

The overall objective of the project was to support a complete, fast and safe evacuation of passenger ships by developing innovative concepts and technical solutions with special consideration of elderly and mobility-impaired persons. The concepts should increase the safety of people on passenger ships without restricting their freedom and personal rights.

Results of the Institute for Safety Engineering / Ship Safety e.V.:

The ISV e.V. sub-project focused on the areas of evacuation procedures and structural and technical support, especially for persons with limited mobility (PEM).

In an extensive field test with more than 150 people involved, different evacuation concepts were examined depending on the storage of the life jackets in the cabins or at the sample station. The results showed that, depending on the size of the ship, the structural conditions and the process organisation, a shorter total evacuation time can be expected if the life jackets are issued to the passengers at the sample station.

Interviews with the crew were conducted on the organisation and conditions of transporting PEM in emergency situations. In parallel, persons with limited mobility were interviewed about their support needs on board.