Towards the assessment of potential impact of unmanned vessels on maritime transportation safety

TLDR

Unmanned merchant vessels are expected to enter service soon, with proponents claiming they will improve safety by eliminating crew‑related accidents, yet their response to incidents remains uncertain and the literature lacks an objective safety assessment. The study aims to determine whether maritime accidents would occur and how their consequences would differ if ships were unmanned. The authors use a what‑if analytical framework applied to 100 maritime accident reports to evaluate potential safety outcomes. Results indicate that unmanned ships could reduce navigational accidents, but may lead to more severe consequences from non‑navigational incidents such as fires and structural failures.

Abstract

The prototypes of unmanned merchant vessels are expected to come into service within the coming years. The main line of argument supporting their introduction pertains to the increase in navigational safety, which is expected to be achieved by reducing the frequency of human-related accidents on board ships, by removing the crews. On the other hand, the response of unmanned ship to potential accidents is still uncertain. With enthusiasm on one side and apprehension on the other, the literature lacks an objective study on the effect of unmanned ships on safety of maritime transportation. This paper constitutes an attempt to bridge the aforementioned gap by applying a framework based on what-if analysis to a hundred maritime accident reports. The aim of the analysis is to assess whether the accident would have happened if the ship had been unmanned, and once the accident had happened - would its consequences have been different. The results obtained reveal that the occurrence of navigational accidents (e.g. collision, grounding) can be expected to decrease with the development of unmanned ship. However the extent of consequences resulting particularly from non-navigational accidents (e.g. fire, ship loss due to structural failure) can be expected to be much larger for the unmanned ships when compared to the conventional ones.