In recent years, a significant amount of research has been conducted on autonomous ships. Since it is assumed that these ships will sail with a significantly reduced crew or even without people on board, the design of the ship needs reconsideration. The absence of people on board and the associated safety measures could result in a more efficient design. However, to achieve the required design freedom, the existing regulatory framework will have to be amended. In this article, we will focus on potential changes in the Convention for Safety Of Life At Sea (SOLAS) and in particular on the Required Subdivision Index. The evaluation is performed by using the principle of equivalent safety, which will ensure that unmanned ships will be at least as safe as manned ships. The index gives a requirement for the allowed probability of sinking when a ship is damaged due to collision or contact. The safety level is related to the safety of ship, cargo, environment and crew. If the crew is no longer present, the consequences of an incident will be less severe, since the probability of casualties is no longer present. If the principle of equivalent safety is applied, a lower subdivision index can be accepted for unmanned autonomous vessels. In this article, the level of risk that a manned ship is subjected to will be derived by means of a risk analysis. In this risk analysis all logical consequences of a collision will be taken into account, covering both the probability of losing the entire ship and the consequences of the cases where the ship will not sink. Thereafter, the Required Subdivision Index for unmanned ships, which ensures an equivalent safety level to an equivalent manned ship, is established. The sensitivity of the result to changes in the data is discussed as well.
Autonomous ships have become a topic of interest for an increasing number of researchers over the last years. Most of the research that is being performed focuses on autonomous navigation. An important driver for this research is the belief that autonomous navigation will increase safety at sea. In order to evaluate the possible safety benefit of autonomous navigation, it is essential to have an understanding of the risk associated with navigation-related accidents. In this paper a monetary quantification of the risk associated with navigation-related accidents will be presented. It is the intention to provide order-of-magnitude figures for the annual risk for different ship types and sizes. Although it is acknowledged that the analysis comes with uncertainties, the results provide an overview contribution that different damage cases make to the overall risk per year, associated with navigation-related accidents. It is found that the annual risk can be expected to be between €1.5 billion and €2.5 billion. Consequently, the maximum annual safety benefit of autonomous navigation is equal to this figure if autonomous navigation will be able to prevent all navigation-related accidents.
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