Dimitrios V. Lyridis

Introduction to an innovative crew composition approach based on safety/operational and financial requirements

This paper proposes a tool to estimate crew composition based on safety/operational and financial requirements. As there is a tendency of ship owners to implement improved technologies on board their vessels, there is no systematic way to predict their potential effect on crew size and composition (typically determined by flag state authorities on a case-to-case basis) nor on the type and complexity of on board duties new technologies might dictate. The main aim of this paper is to develop a tool to assist in determining crew composition, by taking into account both administration’s and the ship owner’s point of view. Based on data collected from ship owners, a data mining technique is implemented in order to form a generalized framework that estimates crew composition as a function of ship type, size, and degree of automation. The agreement of model predictions with records from specific (vessel) cases is very good in terms of safety (for operations such as watchkeeping, mooring/unmooring, loading/unloading). The specific intended use of this tool is to help a ship owner decide whether it is cost-beneficial to retrofit a conventional vessel with advanced technologies that would potentially entail a reduced crew (probably dealing with different and more complex on board duties). Its main benefits are that it can be used to estimate crew composition before any vessel construction or upgrade has actually taken place and that it allows crew composition to be easily adapted to the technological evolution of ship systems even at their current rapid pace.

A statistical approach on oil pollution in Greek Seas

In general, the problem of oil pollution is included amongst the most important threats for the marine environment. Moreover, Greece has a nodular position in Southern Europes oil trade and transportation network; therefore it is only natural to expect some incidents of oil pollution that might affect the Greek seas and their shores. In this paper, we present the development of a Greek oil spill database. Then we focus on its statistical analysis and on some corresponding indicative results. We will conclude the paper with a brief description of the proposed strategic analysis with the presentation of a flexible network approach into matters of oil marine pollution.