No other classification society in the world has the depth and breadth of experience of ABS across all major sectors of marine industry.

Since its inception in 1862, ABS has been a global leader in marine safety. With nearly 4,000 technical professionals positioned around the world, the ABS team has the experience, knowledge and professional judgment to assist members and clients in developing their marine projects.

Today ABS is on the cutting edge of technologies related to technical evaluation services, vessel performance, LNG as marine fuel and the latest design techniques. Our professionals are also up to date on the latest in regulatory requirements and best practices of the marine industry.

No matter the type of vessel or the location of construction, ABS professionals stand ready to help with the complete life cycle of your project.

Source: ww2.eagle

Compliance Planner provides you with a tailored list of requirements that your fleet needs to meet to achieve compliance. Data gleaned from the tool equips you with a single point of information to familiarize yourself with future legislation and identify the number of vessels affected by each requirement – enabling you to take timely action.

Covering all relevant upcoming compliance for regulations impacting your fleet, Compliance Planner reduces the effort spent mining large amounts of paperwork, saving you time and money.

Beyond, the application reduces the risk of missing key regulatory deadlines resulting in non-compliance and helps you to navigate to relevant content and tools to support your compliance needs.

Everything to help you and to keep your decision-making ahead of the regulatory curve.

Source: dnv

The Department of Partnerships and Projects (DPP) serves as the gateway for developing partnership opportunities with a wide range of external partners, including IMO Member States, UN agencies, financial institutions, NGOs, IGOs and the private sector.

The Department began operating on 1 March 2020 to increase the existing portfolio of donor-supported long-term projects supporting the technical cooperation objectives of IMO. The establishment of DPP reflects the strong and continuing commitment of IMO to helping its Member States achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, with its 17 Sustainable Development Goals, and implement the Organization’s regulatory framework.

IMO has a long and successful track record of matching the requirements of developing and less-developed countries with resources made available by a range of governmental, institutional and corporate donors. Building on this, DPP also promotes a culture of collaboration and innovation, creating broader engagement and partnerships with maritime and ocean-related stakeholders.

Source: imo

The safety management system (SMS) is an organized system planned and implemented by the shipping companies to ensure the safety of the ship and marine environment.

SMS is an important aspect of the International safety management (ISM) code and it details all the important policies, practices, and procedures that are to be followed in order to ensure the safe functioning of ships at the sea. All commercial vessels are required to establish safe ship management procedures. SMS forms one of the important parts of the ISM code.

The safety management system (SMS) therefore ensures that each and every ship comply with the mandatory safety rules and regulations, and follow the codes, guidelines,  and standards recommended by the IMO, classification societies, and concerned maritime organizations.

Source: marineinsight

The Electronic Chart Display and Information System (ECDIS) is a development in the navigational chart system used in naval vessels and ships. With the use of the electronic chart system, it has become easier for a ship’s navigating crew to pinpoint locations and attain directions.

ECDIS complies with IMO Regulation V/19 & V/27 of SOLAS convention as amended, by displaying selected information from a System Electronic Navigational Chart (SENC). ECDIS equipment complying with SOLAS requirements can be used as an alternative to paper charts.

Besides enhancing navigational safety, ECDIS greatly eases the navigator’s workload with its automatic capabilities such as route planning, route monitoring, automatic ETA computation and ENC updating. In addition, ECDIS provides many other sophisticated navigation and safety features, including continuous data recording for later analysis.

Source: marineinsight

Helle Hammer, Chair of the International Union of Marine Insurance (IUMI) Policy Forum, has argued that the shipping industry ‘urgently needs’ International Maritime Organization (IMO) regulation and Class rules on the implementation and use of new marine fuel types such as hydrogen and ammonia.

In a statement issued by the IUMI today (3 September), Hammer said: ‘We applaud IMO’s ambition and calls for a decarbonised shipping industry. As marine insurers, it is our job to help shipowners transition to low or zero carbon fuels safely and with all associated risks fully understood and managed.

‘As these new fuel types are largely un-tested, the insurance industry has no history or loss records to help it assess the potential risks involved. We need to learn about these new fuels and educate our clients accordingly.

‘As importantly, we need IMO regulation and Class rules on the implementation and use of these new fuels. This will ensure the safety of the crew and enable marine underwriters to assess and offer necessary financial protection for this new risk profile. Mindful of the time it takes for new regulation to come into force, we urge IMO and other regulators to begin work now.’

Hammer continued: ‘Environmentally friendly fuels carry their own risks, ammonia is both toxic and corrosive, and hydrogen has a wide flammability range and ignites easily. Whilst we welcome the proposed safety guidelines as a useful starting point, they are non-mandatory and so can only be an interim measure. We urgently need mandatory requirements to be developed and implemented to facilitate the transition to greener fuels.’

The IUMI noted that two recent submissions to IMO have proposed the development of safety guidelines for new fuel types and European Union (EU) Member States and the European Commission (EC) propose to include this in the work plan for the next phase of the development of the International Code of Safety for Ships using Gases of other low-flashpoint Fuels (IGF Code).

Both the International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) and INTERCARGO have proposed to develop guidelines for safety of newly built vessels using ammonia as fuel. IUMI believes that guidance is also needed for the education and training of crew onboard, and to address safe and environmentally sound operations.

Source: bunkerspot

Source: transportstyrelsen

Container shipping giant MSC Mediterranean Shipping Company doubled down on its position to avoid sending its vessels through the Northern Sea Route and urged others to follow suit, citing environmental concerns.

“As a responsible company, this was an obvious decision for us,” said MSC CEO, Soren Toft. “MSC will not seek to cut through the melting ice of the Arctic to find a new route for commercial shipping, and I consider this a position the whole shipping industry must adopt.”

Running from Murmansk near Russia’s border with Norway to the Bering Strait near Alaska, the Northern Sea Route is significantly shorter than going via the Suez Canal and cuts sea transport times from Asia to Europe.

Shipping activity in the Arctic has picked up as the region has warmed at least twice as quickly as the rest of the world over the last three decades. In particular, the trade is driven by commodities producers—mainly in Russia, China and Canada—sending iron ore, oil, liquefied natural gas (LNG) and other fuels through Arctic waters.

MSC first announced its commitment to avoid the Northern Sea Route, including the Northeast and Northwest Passages, in 2019 in an effort to limit black carbon and other environmental impacts in the environmentally sensitive Arctic. Its competitors Hapag-Lloyd and CMA CGM are among other shipping companies that have made similar pledges.

“Some of our peers have already made the same commitment to put the preservation of the Arctic environment ahead of profits. The Northern Sea Route is neither a quick fix for the current market challenges, nor a viable long-term strategy,” Toft said.

An expansion of Arctic shipping could increase the emissions of so-called black carbon—physical particles of unburned carbon which can settle on land or ice, as well as compromising air quality and accelerating the shrinkage of Arctic sea ice. MSC said it believes risks such as navigation incidents, fuel spills, air quality and altering the ecological balance/biodiversity of the marine habitat beneath the surface of the sea also outweigh any commercial opportunities to make a short cut between North America or Europe and eastern Russia or Asia.

“Attempting to open new navigation routes which skim the polar ice cap sounds like the ignorant ambition of an 18th century explorer, when today we know that this would pose further risks to humans and many other species in that region, as well as worsen the impact of shipping upon climate change,” said Bud Darr, Executive Vice President Maritime Policy & Government Affairs at MSC Group.

“MSC supports the decarbonization targets of the UN International Maritime Organization, including complete decarbonisation of shipping, and sees no overall merit in using this potential trade route. The risks and impacts outweigh the benefits of the shorter transits. There are no shortcuts toward genuine decarbonization of shipping and this is a shortcut that should definitely be avoided.”

Source: marinelink

Let us assume your tug is leaving port, outbound in a narrow channel a nautical mile or two from the exit, making 8 knots. You are complying with IMO’s collision regulations (COLREGS) narrow channel rule 9(a) and are sticking to the starboard side of the channel. You, however, observe a vessel to starboard moving very slowly but shaping to make a course across the entrance.

It is clear that its intention is to pick up a pilot and enter the channel and that it will have to turn to port to do so, to line up on her starboard side of the channel. Its bearing is steady.

Do the “crossing rules” (rules 15-17 of COLREGS) apply, making you give way to the vessel, or does the narrow channel rule, requiring you to stay on the starboard side of the channel, override that? What should you do?

The English Supreme Court, on appeal from the Admiralty Court in London, has now grappled with the tension between the two rules.

The collision in question occurred in February 2015 between UK-registered large container vessel Ever Smart and Republic of the Marshall Islands-flagged very large crude carrier (VLCC) Alexandra 1 in the pilot boarding area, just outside the exit of the dredged narrow channel to Jebel Ali, United Arab Emirates.

Alexandra 1 was inbound and awaiting the pilot transferring across from Ever Smart before entering the channel.

The Supreme Court has produced a detailed judgement referring to authorities going back to 1886, long before any uniform version of the COLREGS applied internationally.

The earlier decisions concerned collision cases in and around various narrow channels in the approaches from Bristol to Buenos Aires.

Two issues fell to be decided. The Supreme Court held that the crossing rules are overridden only when the approaching vessel is shaping to enter the channel, adjusting its course so as to reach the entrance on the starboard side of it, on its final approach.

That can be determined from the vessel leaving the channel by visual (or radar) observation of the approaching vessel’s course and speed.

The Supreme Court also held if two vessels are crossing so as to involve the risk of collision, the engagement of the crossing rules is not dependent upon the give-way vessel being on a steady course.

If it is reasonably apparent to those navigating the two vessels that they are approaching each other on a steady bearing, then they are indeed crossing, so as to involve a risk of collision, even if the give-way vessel is on an erratic course.

Rules for the avoidance of collision were first adopted by international convention in the 19th century. Since that time, the Admiralty Court in London has been tasked with interpreting and applying them to apportion liability in collision cases before it. These are typically 80:20 or two thirds, one third or 60:40 or 50:50 according to the degree of fault.

Fault is measured by the causative degree to which either ship adhered or not to the COLREGS. It is no simple task to extract precise guidance for navigators from a 60–page court judgment, but I would put it briefly as follows:

1. Vessels intending to exit or enter a narrow channel should both proceed with caution, always maintaining a good lookout so as to determine whether a risk of collision exists, and accordingly what their responsibilities are.
2. Specifically, the vessel that has the other on its starboard side on a steady bearing, should comply with the obligation to give way.
3. Accordingly, a ship due to exit a narrow channel may be under an obligation to give way in accordance with the crossing rules.
4. Bridge crew on such a vessel should not regard the narrow channel rule as permitting them to proceed on, regardless of incoming traffic approaching towards the entrance, in particular traffic to starboard.
5. Only where an approaching ship is finally shaping, or lining up, to enter the channel on the starboard side, will the narrow channel rule apply in preference to the crossing rules.

What then if your tug is towing a vessel and constrained in its ability to manoeuvre? How that alters its duties and those of an oncoming vessel in a collision situation is for another day.

Source: rivieramm

The International Maritime Organization (IMO) adopted Resolution MSC.428(98) aimed to address cyber risks in the maritime industry. The IMO resolution effectively addresses cyber risks as a part of safety management systems within the ISM Code. Under Resolution MSC.428(98), administrators are to ensure their existing safety management systems appropriately address cyber risks by their 2021 annual verification.

This regulatory overview summarizes key parts of the IMO 2021 cybersecurity measures, complete with cross-references to ISO/IEC 27001 and the Guidelines on Cyber Security on Board Ships.

Source: missionsecure