OCEAN is the acronym of Operator-Centered Enhancement of Awareness in Navigation, an European-funded project coordinated by HVL, the Western Norwegian University of Applied Sciences. It has just started at the beginning of this month and CIMNE researcher Francisco Rodero, from CENIT Group for Innovation in Multimodal Transport, is involved on this project that will contribute to the mitigation of navigational accidents by supporting the navigators to do an even better job than they do presently.
Key figures
- Around 3.000 maritime incidents occur every year in the European maritime fleet.
- 28% of these accidents are categorised as severe or very severe accidents, resulting in the loss of life onboard, pollution, fire, collisions or grounding. Navigational accidents are dominant in these statistics according to the European Maritime Safety Agency, be it for cargo, passenger or service ships.
- Horizon Europe is the EU’s funding programme for research and innovation with a budget of €95.5 billion over the period 2021-2027. The program facilitates collaboration and strengthens the impact of research and innovation in terms of knowledge, technologies and jobs, while tackling global challenges such as climate change.
- The OCEAN consortium, coordinated by Western Norway University of Applied Sciences, includes 13 partner organizations across 7 different European countries from the industry, academia, NGOs and end users
- The project launched in October 2022 and is scheduled to run for 3 years.
The project will go both deeper and wider, to identify and suggest amendments or improvements in the most pertinent factors that may contribute to events becoming accidents: training, technical, human or organisational factors, operational constraints, processes and procedures, commercial pressures or structural issues like shortcomings in rules and regulations. The OCEAN project will develop new design methods and operational processes, as well as integrating existing technologies to provide novel and improved functionalities.
OCEAN will suggest the creation of a European Navigational Hazard infrastructure, action included in the WP6 of the project which will be lead by CIMNE. Our researchers will also participate actively in the collection, process and distribution of data relating to the presence of marine mammals and floating containers.
OCEAN Consortium: Meet the partners
- Høgskulen på Vestlandet (Norway) https://www.hvl.no/en/ (Coordinator)
- Kystverket (Norway) https://www.kystverket.no/
- National Technical University of Athens (Greece) https://www.ntua.gr/en/
- Centre Internacional de Mètodes Numèrics a l’Enginyeria (Spain) https://www.cimne.com/
- Teledyne Reson A/S (Denmark) http://www.teledynemarine.com/reson
- Universidade dos Açores (Portugal) https://www.uac.pt/
- Kongsberg Maritime AS (Norway) https://www.kongsberg.com/no/maritime/
- Kongsberg Seatex AS (Norway) https://www.kongsberg.com/no/maritime/contact/our-offices/norway-trondheim-seatex-as/
- Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Spain) https://www.upc.edu/
- Irish Ferries Ltd (Ireland) https://www.irishferries.com/
- Irish Whale and Dolphin Group (Ireland) https://iwdg.ie/
- The Nautical Institute (The United Kingdom) https://www.nautinst.org/
- Lloyd’s Register (The United Kingdom) https://www.lr.org/
