A valid need for increasing SAR resources in the Mediterranean

One of yesterday’s conversations in my head:

- How can you have a blog called ”Risky business at sea” and not write about the horrible conditions for boat refugees in the Mediterranean trying to get from Africa or Asia to Europe (or into EU)?
- I can’t and I’ve avoided it for too long.
- Why is that?
- The explanation is that it is a complicated problem. However, that isn’t a valid excuse!

So here we go:

This far 2015 (mid-April) reports (UNHCR) talked about 900 persons drowned or missing from these transports, for the same period 2014 the estimation was 47 persons! The explanation for this increase is reported to be the result of several changes since last year including the war Syria and further destabilization of several African countries south of the Sahara.

The direct cause of these deaths is the state of the ships used and how they are overloaded by refugees. However, that is because no one takes responsibility for the voyages and that people are willing to take great risks in order to cross the Mediterranean Sea. The long term solution therefore, off course, lies in reducing the need for crossing the Mediterranean. That is however not a simple task (and out of the scope for this blog). However, in the meantime we know that many boats and ships (as a result of the risks taken by the refugees and criminal acts by the people organizing the human trafficking) will capsize and or sink in the Mediterranean without the possibility to send out a distress call.

Do these seafarers, because they also are refugees, have less right to be expecting rescue than others? NO, but at the same time any seafarer cannot expect to be rescued instantly anywhere in the world. What you can expect depends on where you are, but it shouldn’t depend on who you are. Does that mean that we should relocate Europe’s Search and Rescue (SAR) resources to the Mediterranean Sea and these refugees in distress? We would probably save more people that way because nowhere else is the need for rescue as great. However, relocating all resources to one area is not possible (logistically, but also) as all nations have a responsibility for they their waters that cannot be left unattended. So even though relocating all SAR resources to the Mediterranean Sea would give the most bang for the buck it isn’t possible.

The EU replacement for the Italian Mare Nostrum, the Frontex Plus/Trition, is given reasoning above the right type of solution. However, it is unfortunately under equipped and under financed given the need.

Humans are awesome!

In November 2014 I was quoted by “Gotlands Tidningar” (a small Swedish newspaper) saying that I was skeptic to unmanned cargo ships. I am, but I also know that there are a lot of (simple) activities at sea that can be solved with unmanned or even autonomous systems (for example unmanned submarines for civilian or military purposes). An autopilot is a simple thing solving a simple task, the problem arises when the wrong pipe rapture in the middle of the Atlantic because no one was there to see the sign before it was too late. With no one onboard such a small break-down suddenly becomes a big problem. 

Fixing a leaking pipe with a soda can, no
big problem for a human!

 I like to argue that making ships insensitive to small break-downs is much more expensive (in regard to investments, fuel and maintenance) than keeping the crews onboard.

In November 2013 I wrote that ”when an engineer looks at a system there is a drive for getting everything controllable and predictable, these are considered important characteristics of a good system.Therefore, people in that system will be considered a problem, because they are not controllable nor predictable. However, recognizing the fact that things will happen anyway you will also need a system that is able to recover. … I think the human errors are outweighed many times by the human recoveries and last minute prevention skills and the “human prevention” events are probably many more than the “human error” incidents. The problem is that no one is counting the human prevention events, but when you need someone to blame you identify, document and count the human errors.”

Now, when watching ”People are awesome” videos on Internet I would like to be able to say “I rest my case”. Because, after seeing for example how a person can sail and tack a foiling moth in rough seas it is for me obvious that humans’ ability to react to sensory information and adapt actions is second to none.

The problem is that too many still fail to see this and talk about drones and autonomous systems like it is some kind of solution. At least at sea the tasks are too complex to be defined in advance and implemented into a computer.

GO HUMANS!

[Biking:] Risky business on land!

In the well written piece “Gatustrid” (Street fight) in the Swedish morning paper Svenska Dagbladet (Sunday March 1st) E. E. Almqvist writes about how the work to get better conditions for everyday bikers in Stockholm has failed. The article describes how Stockholm’s bike lanes are full of sudden interruptions, a description I as an everyday biker all too well recognizes. There exist many documents describing that Stockholm aims for creating good (and even excellent) conditions for bikers, but the reality is that even new projects are made with zero understanding on how to create safety for bikers.

(With the "risk" of reducing my credibility) My carbon disc single speed cyclocross bike for year-around biking to work. © Hans Liwång 2015.

On my way to work there have been a couple of changes the last years with the ambition to create a “priority bike path”. However it is done with sudden turns (radius 2 meters) were I and other bikers (two-way) are supposed to share a lane less than 2 meters wide. It is also marked out with curb stones immersing the bike lane risking striking down bikers and making it impossible for the snow plows to remove the snow (even the narrow plows don’t fit between the curb stones and therefore leaves 1 dm thick snow very hard to master on a bike).

The article also describes the documentary “Bikes vs Cars” by F. Gertten where normal people, (like me) who have found the bike to be perfect way for transportation, unwillingly have become activists fighting against the car dominated way of modern life.

So, why am I writing about bikes on this blog? It is because I know that if you don’t have an understanding and culture (from planners to builders and operators) for the goals you are trying to achieve (could be bike safety or maritime security) you will fail. You cannot make mistakes. For example a good plan for a bike lane will not make for a good bike lane unless you make every meter of the lane good (you cannot interrupt every 100 meters with a bad solution where the biker has to “fight” her way for ten meters). I bike such bad solutions every day and I have seen such solutions to many times on ships. You can identify the plan, but you see that it was not followed through.

IT IS ABOUT A SHARED RISK AWERENESS FROM decision maker via planner/designer to user!

There are cities that have made it work for bikers, (like Copenhagen) so it is possible. I have also seen good solutions on ships.

No one...

No one want to be onboard a sitting duck, and no one want to create one with poor design or poor operational decisions. To help in avoiding such decisions there is a thesis about decision support methods for ship security.

Risk-based ship security analysis – a decision-support approach

Thesis abstract

The protection of shipping does not come without hazards and threats for military forces, individual civilian ship operators and crews. With particular focus on security threats, this thesis is about how to prepare for such operations without introducing unnecessary risks, i.e., supporting conscious risk-taking related to ship security. It examines both civilian and military aspects of maritime security and therefore draws from the experience of both fields.

(C) H. Liwång 2015

Maritime safety regulations, guidelines and methods have a history and culture of systematic research, development and implementation. In contrast, international security is highly politicised and therefore less transparent. Unfortunately, comprehensive studies of ship security risk are rare. Moreover, applying risk-based approaches to security areas requires special considerations, and the limited research in this field has led to a knowledge gap.

To reduce the identified challenges with respect to security risk analysis, the goal of this thesis is to improve security decision support by defining an approach to ship security analysis. To increase overall safety, this approach must facilitate compromises between traditional maritime safety and maritime security. Accordingly, the objective is to develop an approach that is both systematic and gives the decision maker an appropriate picture of the security risks. To examine the requirements for a security decision-support approach, the work in the appended papers studies both threats to naval vessels and the security threat posed to commercial vessels by pirates.

The results of the studies can be used to further develop military doctrines and civilian guidelines. This study shows that the description and quantification of the (concept of) operation in the risk analysis is central for implementing both security and naval ship survivability. In addition, the crew’s risk perception, procedural safeguards and how the implemented risk controls are perceived have an important role not only in risk analysis but also in deciding the effectiveness of implemented controls. It is also concluded that only using expected values—not collecting and using uncertainties—in the analysis can lead to misleading results. Therefore, the uncertainty treatment offered by a quantitative approach is crucial for risk understanding, especially if the aim is to find robust control options or to support the development of a resilient culture.

The Thesis was defended in public on March 12th for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Department of Shipping and Marine Technology, Chalmers University of Technology. The faculty opponent was Dr. Rolf Skjong, DNV GL, Norway.

More information including extensive summary in full text

Sitting duck [Sedens Anatis s.l.]

(C) Hans Liwång 2015

The Sitting duck belongs to the family of things and is characterized by its helplessness and low level of protection. Can be found at sea, on land and in the air.

Evolution/history: the Sitting duck (Sedens Anatis) was first found in, and is still common in, the Anatidae (duck) family of birds. Therefore, the traditional Sitting duck is characterized by it being an easy target floating on the water, not suspecting that it is the object of a hunter or predator. During the last centuries there have been many reports of Sitting ducks in other forms, including artefacts, humans and other types of animals. Sitting duck at large is therefore today considered as a family of things and formally named Sedens Anatis Sensu Lato (s.l.).

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No one want to be onboard a sitting duck, and no one want to create one with poor design or poor operational decisions.

Should we in Sweden be surprised when we learn that there are foreign submarines in the Stockholm archipelago? Hardly!

On the Swedish politician's statements it sounds like the foreign submarine in Swedish waters (October 2014) was a one-time event. However, given the characteristics of the archipelago, it is very unlikely that this was and is a rare event.

Analyses of submarine operations have a relative long scientific tradition of successfully using quantitative methods. This started during the Second World War where especially UK drafted a very competent group of scientists with the ambition to win the Submarine War in the Atlantic. Under the concept of operations research UK developed methods to analyse submarine movements and behaviour in order to figure out how best to attack them (see, for example, the U-boats in the Bay of Biscay, an essay in Operations Analysis of McCue and Methods of Operations Research Morse and Kimball). This was the start of a successful civil and military research field.

Obviously, when analysing this type of event there are many uncertainties, but there are also some things we know with certainty, for example, about the Stockholm archipelago. If we use what we know about the archipelago, but also are honest about what we do not know with certainty, one can assess the likelihood of actually discovering a foreign ongoing submarine operation. Things we do not know exactly are for example, the duration of the submarine operation, how often the submarine have to surface and the probability for the Armed Forces finding clear evidence if they are searching thoroughly. Here I assume that a submarine operation is one to four days, the submarine is surfacing two to four times a day and that the Armed Forces probability to confirm the presens of a submarine is somewhere between 20 and 70 percent (given a foreign submarine in the archipelago). From the Armed Forces own reports we also know that two independent observations from civilians were required before the operation began.

Given the assumptions above and some probability calculations the probability to confirm a performed hostile operation is about 7 per thousand, but this figure is, as a result of uncertainties, not easy to determine exactly. We can say, however, given the assumed uncertainties, that the probability, with a 95 percent probability, is between 3 per thousand and 16 per cent (informed readers now understand that I'm not a frequentist, but rather a Bayesian). Not minding the exact values, it still can be concluded that it is very difficult, and therefore rare, to succeed in confirming an ongoing underwater operation. Therefore, it is even more unlikely to confirm an operation in more sparsely populated archipelagos or at sea.

Was this incident a one-time event, given the way the world looks today, or a common phenomenon that Sweden so far only discovered once? I don’t know. Also, how to comment on it depends on what we mean by a “one-time event” and how we define "today". We know that submarines have been in Swedish waters before, but it was during the Cold War and both Sweden’s ability to detect submarines and the security situation was different then. Therefore, we look at three different cases:

Assumptions A: The frequency of foreign operations as well as Sweden’s ability to detect these operations have been reasonably constant over the past ten years.

=>  The probability that this was a one-time event calculates to between 1 and 6 per thousand

Assumption B: Conditions, such as the crisis in Ukraine, has influenced the situation so that we only can assume that the conditions have remained constant over the past year.

=> The probability that this was a one-time event calculates to less than 0.6 per thousand.

Assumption C: The situation continues like it is now and after totally 20 similar years only Sweden till has only one confirmed foreign operation.

=> The probability that this was a one-time event calculates to between 3 per thousand and 1.2 per cent.

My conclusion from the probabilities above is that this was not a one-time event, but I can be wrong!

Allowing the archipelago of the Swedish capitol to be so unguarded so that it is virtually impossible to detect an ongoing operation is as if we wouldn’t notice foreign military airplanes until they are landing at the Arlanda airport (just outside Stockholm).

There is only one way to change this equation and increase the likelihood of detection. It is by constantly having (much) more presence at sea and more sensors in the water (as fixed installations and on ships, submarines and helicopters) while also having greater capacity to more closely examining suspicious observations. If Sweden focuses on this, the likelihood to confirm foreign operations can be increased. However, to reach a level where Sweden with high reliability can meet submarine operations in Swedish waters takes substantial efforts.

Given what we know today, the only surprise is that Sweden actually managed to confirm the submarine visit, it is a great achievement for the Armed Forces. The submarine in itself is not surprising and a single event like this should not alter our perception of the outside world. Estimates of how common unwelcome visits are must (as before) instead based on what the visitors have to gain in relation to what they have to lose (gain vs risk). Today, there is no shortage of theories about what the purpose may be and, as shown above, the probability of detection is low (i.e. there are many plausible gains and low risk). However, the consequence of a discovery can be very serious (if Sweden will use weapons if needed). If visiting submarine sailors are going here about once a year, it is about as dangerous as working on a fishing vessel. This, even though there is a small probability that a visit could result in death.

There are a lot more dangerous things that people do just for fun.

Conclusions:

-        This was most probably not a one-time event.
-        The risks for a foreign submarine operating in Swedish waters are low.
-        The military purpose of a submarine operation in Swedish waters doesn’t need to be substantial. As a result of the low risks the purpose can be no more than crew training.