The "Transit Risk Project" focuses on the development of models for quantitative assessment of navigational risks entailed by vessels during transits into and out of ports. It is a three year long that employs historical casualty data to build these models. The efforts during the first year focused on the modeling of grounding risk at the port level, with special emphasis on the contribution of inaccuracies in navigation charts. Prof. N. M. Patrikalakis from the Design Laboratory of the Ocean Engineering Department at MIT and Dr. H. Kite-Powell from the Marine Policy Center at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution are the principal investigators of this project. Johan Jebsen, another graduate student of the department, is also involved in the project as a research assistant.
The results obtained from first year’s efforts are encouraging. They suggest that sufficient data are available for the construction of a meaningful port-level model. Even though the accessible historical grounding data is not complete, the model is expected to provide some explanatory and predictive ability.
A separate model of economic risk has been developed also as part of the project. The objective of this model is to provide estimates of economic loss associated with the physical risk of grounding for a given region. Work previously performed by the U.S. Coast Guard and others served as the basis for constructing an algorithm that calculates cost estimates for groundings as a function of relevant parameters, including vessel size, nature of cargo and nature of the transit area.
During the second year, the development of the port-level model will continuer and a working prototype will be delivered. Meanwhile, the research group has started working on the construction of a larger-scale model of risk within a segment of a single waterway. This model is expected to incorporate results of the port-level analysis, but will mainly investigate local factors, such as specifics of channel design, navigational aids configuration, currents, etc. The economic model is expected to be refined as well, mainly by improving the characterization of internal cost and possibly by including new data for external environmental losses.
In the third year, the project focus is expected to shift to other types of casualties, such as collisions. Experience gained in building the risk grounding model will provide a basis for the development of other, related models.
Vassilis C. Papakonstantinou