Risk Analysis and Management of Moored Ships in Ports

The risks associated with mooring of ships are a major concern for port and maritime authorities. Sea waves and extreme weather conditions can lead to excessive movements of vessels and mooring loads affecting the safety of ships, cargo, passengers, crew or port infrastructures. Normally, port activities such as ships’ approach manoeuvres and loading/unloading operations, are conditioned or suspended based solely on weather or wave forecasts, causing large economic losses. Nevertheless, it has been shown that some of the most hazardous events with moored ships happen on days with mild sea and wind conditions, being the culprit long waves and resonance phenomena. Bad weather conditions can be managed with an appropriate or reinforced mooring arrangement. A correct risk assessment must be based on the movements of the ship and on the mooring loads, taking into account all the moored ship’s system. In this paper, the development of a forecast and warning system based on the assessment of risks associated with moored ships in port areas, SWAMS ALERT, is detailed. This modular system can be scaled and adapted to any port, providing decision-makers with accurate and complete information on the behaviour of moored ships, movements and mooring loads, allowing a better planning and integrated management of port areas. INTRODUCTION The concept of Risk Management (RM) integrates: risk analysis; risk mitigation and emergency response, recovery and reconstruction after a hazardous event (Faber, 2007). Taubenböck et al., (2008) defines risk as the interaction between hazard and vulnerability and the RM cycle as the basis for sustainable development. A RM cycle is a series of steps divided in two blocks: before and after a disaster event occurs. Before a disaster event occurs all available data must be gathered to form an information database. Then assess people and environment’s exposure, susceptibility and coping capacity to a given disaster event. Devise a prevention plan and a reaction plan. Then it is possible to assess the vulnerability of those elements to that particular disaster. To measure the hazard itself one must define its type, intensity and probability of occurrence. After a disaster occurs, the reaction plan must be put into action and if needed rehabilitation and reconstruction measures must be undertaken as fast and as effectively as possible. Several authors and their teams have conducted research on the integrated analysis of risks factors on port management, (e.g., Mokhtari et al. (2012), Chang et al. (2014)) and addressing safety and security risks in more or less inclusive terms (e.g., Talley, 1996; Notteboom, 2006; Husdal and Bråthen, 2010; Wang et al., 2014, Chang et al. (2014)). Port Risk Management involves the identification of uncertainty sources completely covering the range of possibilities that can in any way influence performance of port activities. Because they are so numerous, they have to be broken down into broad categories, Ward (2005). For instance, Mokhtari et al. (2012), divided risk factors into six categories: 1. Safety; 2. Security; 3. Pollution; Proceedings of the ASME 2018 37th International Conference on Ocean, Offshore and Arctic Engineering OMAE2018 June 17-22, 2018, Madrid, Spain