Talking about redundancy it have to compare risks of different options that compete for the same final result and for this result it has to decide what the goal is. Most of the time everything is fine but a ship can experience an event that surpasses its abilities. Either propulsion is lost and the ship cannot control its behavior during a storm, resulting in lost lives or even the loss of the ship, or a polluted environment causes a loss. Most ships are not equipped with a redundant parallel propulsion system. The most common reason is that any redundancy is a cost which burdens the operating company. Even safety costs are not really defined since the compensation for the lost lives is negotiable and also depends on the skills of lawyers. Therefore only the business costs can be defined with relative accuracy. When looking at statistics for tankers from ITOPF (The International Tanker Owners Pollution Federation Limited) it can be seen that the causes for environmental pollution are different and they differ when looking at the size of the spills. For smaller spills (up to 7 Tons) Loading/Discharging are most often the cause; these, of course, are operations at the port and as such caused mainly by human activities (organization, communication and coordination). In the case of larger scale spills, accidents have the highest impact, with hull failures most common, followed by grounding and collisions. It is interesting that these three causes accounted for 77% of all accidents from 1974 to 2003. In such cases propulsion has a great impact on consequences and on costs. These statistical categories veil other causes encompassed by them. From the above figures we can see that redundancy can dramatically reduce the probability of a spill and thus it can be seen as a major advance in the battle to prevent environmental damage. The problem is that this poses an additional financial burden on the already weak transportation segment, which is all the time seeking possibilities for cost reduction. A lot in this context depends on maintenance, which is another problem with companies that have low profits: for them maintenance is not the first priority and even with redundant systems we cannot forecast that safety would be improved. When we look at the costs, optimization can be attained by minimizing the operating costs or be accomplished in such a way that the probability of a spill and the degree of its consequences are minimal. With this approach environmental risks are minimized.


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    Title :

    Redundancy of vital systems for merchant ships


    Additional title:

    Redundanz für lebenswichtige Systeme von Frachtschiffen


    Contributors:


    Publication date :

    2004


    Size :

    6 Seiten, 7 Bilder, 1 Tabelle, 17 Quellen



    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




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