Improving the current regime of ship safety inspections: opportunities for technology research and women employment

The new inspection regime that entered into force in 2011, allowed the Paris Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) to change the target of inspecting 25 % of individual ships calling at each Member State, to a system based on the ship-risk profile. The latter combines a set of generic and historical factors (e.g., ship’s type and age, number of deficiencies and detentions, performance of ISM companies) that assists the work of port state control inspectors. Despite those improvements, prioritising ships for safety inspection is still a challenge, not only for authorities, but also to other stakeholders such as classification societies, ship owners, managers and operators. This paper introduces the recently EU-funded project SAFEPEC—Innovative risk-based tools for ship safety inspection. It aims at decreasing the current workload on surveyors through the development of a software prototype that enables the interoperability and coherent interpretation of the different inspection data sources that are available. Additionally, SAFEPEC will develop sensor systems for long-distance monitoring, tracking of failures and collection of near-real-time data from critical ship areas, such as the hull structure and shipboard equipment. As in the entire maritime community, the area of ship inspections is male dominated, although there is a slight shift seen. A small literature review and a survey among both males and females working in the maritime world, showed that both the physical aspects of the job and the difficulties to balance work and family, might still be reasons for females to avoid this work. The new technologies developed within the SAFEPEC project can help to increase job opportunities for women in the future.