This blog covers, but is not limited to, areas such as ship security, naval ships, risk, risk analysis and safety. The posts are spin offs from my research about risks in novel operations at sea. Or for the Swedish speakers out there; a blog about riskanalys, sjösäkerhet, sjöfartsskydd och fartygsskydd.
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Thursday, 30 January 2014
What do we know about the conditions for maritime security?
I recently gave a talk about Civilian shipping in peace, crisis and war
with a northern Europe perspective.
Refrences
Department of Defense (2010) Quadrennial defense review report. Washington DC: United States of America Department of Defense.
IMO (2002) The International Ship and Port Facilities Security (ISPS) Code. Safety of Life at Sea, Chapter XI-2. London: International Maritime Organisation.
Europe is as all other regions of the world
dependent on shipping for support of cargo in general, but also for essential
goods such as specific types of food and medicine. Without this cargo the way
of life as well as quality of life will be affected. This is clearly expressed
in for example the US Quadrennial defense review report (Department of Defense,
2010).
Our ports are relatively stationary and can therefore
without too much effort be included in the maritime security measures implemented
by states to decrease the effects of potential security incidents. This is
however a fairly new area to be handled structurally and the International
Maritime Organisation (IMO) didn’t get involved for real until the introduction
of the ISPS code in 2002 (IMO, 2002). Also, the approaches are to a great
extent borrowed from airport security which has its limitations
when applied to ports and harbors. Therefore, there is still reason to be
somewhat skeptical about the efficiency of the port security efforts of today and
how much we know about how to assess the efficiency.
Shipping of today is an international business
and a ship owner offers his services in the area in the world where he can make
good money without too many uncertainties. The shipping in northern Europe has
a relatively high quality because the money is good and the uncertainties are
low.
But, in the event of a maritime crisis (or simply when maritime security no longer can
be guaranteed) when
there really is a need for maritime security efforts also including ships of
the coasts off Europe:
ð the uncertainties for ship owners also
increase and the high quality ship owners will start operate somewhere else (because
they can),
ð therefore, the conditions for
maritime security will drastically change, and
ð we cannot prepare for maritime
security based on the situation of today
So, what do we know about maritime security in
time of crisis and based on which assumptions can we study it? Not based on
the lessons from the waters off Somalia, that is an entirely different
situation.
Refrences
Department of Defense (2010) Quadrennial defense review report. Washington DC: United States of America Department of Defense.
IMO (2002) The International Ship and Port Facilities Security (ISPS) Code. Safety of Life at Sea, Chapter XI-2. London: International Maritime Organisation.
Saturday, 25 January 2014
August 10: Dramatic sinking in central Stockholm
The ship had just left for its maiden voyage when
it capsized and sank in front of the huge crowd. Onboard were not only crew,
but also VIPs and family to the crew. Almost one third of the 150 persons
onboard died in the accident. The accident was of course a result of a great
amount of errors in the design, construction and preparation processes. No one
has been blamed yet, and no one probably will. However, conflicting and too
specific requirements are regarded as contributing factors.
Now, closing in on 400 years later, the ship is
the central piece in one of the world most visited maritime museum: The Vasa
Museum in Stockholm. The ship sank in 1628 and was salvaged 333 years later
surprisingly intact (the biggest damaged was done in the years after the
sinking when the canons was salvaged).
The ship was commissioned by the Swedish king
Gustav II Adolf, who also set very high demands on the ship. Gustav II Adolf
was committed to protecting Sweden’s Lutheran confession with wars in many
places in northern Europe. The wars also laid the foundations for Sweden as a
great power in Europe in the seventeenths century. Vasa was therefore built in
a very international environment with a king almost always abroad in one of his
many wars, but also built for a king accustomed to giving precise directives
and expecting them to be followed to every point. As IMO writes in the HSC code
prescriptive directions are only effective for basic design, not for novelty.
That also seemed to be the case 1628. Vasa was built under new strategic and
tactical challenges and was therefore bigger and with more cannons than was the
case for other ships of the time. Dutch expertise was hired to build the ship
and with that came a tradition to build ships without drawings and only based
on quantitative relations and rules. Therefore the design was done under a lot
of does and don’ts probably not suited for the intended ship size.
Of course there was stability test, but it had
to be stopped so that the ship didn’t capsize. So the crew knew that the ship
was unsafe! But there were no one powerful enough to take the decision not to sail. Therefore,
the ship capsized (or rather heeled so much that the open cannon doors filled
the ship with water) at the first gust of wind and sank quickly. However, the
sinking give us today an interesting snap shot of the development of complex or
military systems in 1628. Vasa at the Vasa Museum in Stockholm. Photo: H. Liwång |
What I have realized a couple of times, when
using the Vasa case, is that surprisingly many aspects are valid also today; solving
future challenges with yesterday’s technology and also that you don’t always
needs new technology but need to apply known technology in new ways (there were also ships like
Vasa was built at the same time without problems). One difference compared to
today is the closeness between the political level (the king) and the building
of the ship. However, this difference makes for an easier analysis of the ship
design process.
The Vasa ship is a fantastic disaster that
Sweden offers to the rest of the world as an attraction, but also as a case to get
inspired by when taking on development of complex systems!
(The last time I visited the Vasa museum I got
especially affected by how marked by life and sickness even the young and rich
was, life can’t have been easy and the everyday pain must have been challenging
at least)
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