1st Workshop on “Maritime Affairs in the Adriatic Ionian Macro-Region”
Roundtable on “A safer and more secure Adriatic Ionian space”
14/2/2012 - Athens
Maritime Safety in the Adriatic-Ionian Region
Prof. Ernestos Tzannatos
Department of Maritime Studies
University of Piraeus – Greece
e-mail: et@unipi.gr
Safety Risk in Shipping
In everyday use, risk is considered to be the complement of safety, as whatever
is not safe is at risk.
Safety risk in shipping is a situation or circumstance that includes the possibility
of harm (i.e. loss of life/injury to someone or of damage to natural environment
or to man-made environment (property), due to a shipping accident.
Risk is a combination of accident likelihood (L) and its consequences (C),
i.e. RISK = L x C
Shipping-related environmental risk
in the Adriatic-Ionian region
“The intensive maritime transport in the Adriatic Sea basin (and I add the
Adriatic-Ionian region) implies a significant risk of accidents and consequently a
potentially strong impact on the marine environment. .................... the impact
of a single accident – even though accidents are rare – can be highly disastrous.”
Source: “The potential of Maritime Spatial Planning in the Mediterranean Sea- Case study report: The
Adriatic Sea”, prepared by PRC for the European Commission, DG for Maritime Affairs and Fisheries,
January 2011.
The Adriatic is a “closed” narrow sea
for all ship traffic and the Ionian is an
open sea for deep-sea ships with
“closed” sea regions for coastal
passenger and cargo ships sailing within
its internal restricted waters.
 Restricted waters of Adriatic and
Ionian are associated with a highly
sensitive natural environment.
 Around 7,000 oil tankers sail within
the Adriatic-Ionian region every year.
Shipping-related commercial/industrial risk
in the Adriatic-Ionian region
 International Trade
The Mediterranean Sea hosts some 30% of global maritime trade
developed through two major patterns: transit only or calling at a
Mediterranean port.
The Adriatic-Ionian sea region offers the quickest access to central
Europe on the East-West international sea trade flow. Most
international shipping involves calling at some Adriatic port only.
An important share of that traffic is further transported on-land to
central (and central-eastern) European countries, several of them
land-locked. For example, Austria and the Bavaria region receive
75% and 100% of their oil imports through the Adriatic,
respectively.
 Inter- and trans-regional Ro-Pax and Ro-Ro Transport
An intense network of SSS (Ro-Pax and Ro-Ro) connections
between bordering countries (inc. the Adriatic MoS, as an integral
part of EastMed MoS Trans-European Transport Network).
 Local passenger and car ferry connections
 Marine Industries
•
tourism (cruising/sailing and coastal resorts)
•
aquaculture and fishing
•
offshore oil/gas production
Shipping-related safety risk asymmetries
within the Adriatic region
Maritime traffic and trade:
Italian ports - 75-80% of ship traffic and trade volume
Croatian ports - 10% of ship traffic and trade volume (with growth tendency).
Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina (through the Croatian port of Ploce),
Montenegro and Albania - 15% of ship traffic and 10% of trade volume.
Coastline exposure:
Adriatic - 8,300 km.
Eastern Adriatic - 7,000 km (85% of total)
Croatia - 6,200 km (75% of total)
Italy - 1,300 km (15% of total)
Slovenia - 45 km, Albania - 400 km, Montenegro -290 km, Bosnia and
Herzegovina - 20 km
In conclusion, although the coastline lengths of individual countries are
contrasted with their maritime use of the seas, the risk is equally
significant on both opposite sides of the Adriatic Sea.
Maritime safety record in the Adriatic-Ionian region
Ro-Ro UND Adriyatik
(Fire, Total Loss, 2008)
Source: ITOPF Handbook, 2004/2005.
Kater I Rades
(Collision, 83 dead immigrants, 1997)
A recent shipping disaster
• Ship: The Turkish Ro-Ro vessel UND Adriyatik carrying 200 trucks and 11
tons of hazardous material in addition to about 150 tons of ship
fuel caught fire.
• Location: Some 15 nm from the northern Croatian resort of Rovinj in the
Adriatic Sea.
• Day and time: 6th of February 2008, at 5:04 a.m.
• Threatened resources: Human life, environment and property.
• Outcome: Total loss.
All passengers and crew, 31 of them, were evacuated at 7:06 a.m.
by the crew of the Greek ship Ikarus Palace.
It drifted to within 5 nm from Brijuni Islands and National Park,
before its towage to Trieste on the 17th of February.
The cause of the fire on board the 193-metre ship was not immediately
known. Neither the Turkish nor Croatian authorities identified promptly the
type of hazardous material the ship was carrying.
Paris MoU Record for Adriatic-Ionian states
Time period: 17/12/11 – 10/2/12
Adriatic-Ionian detentions = 6
Total MoU detentions = 54
MoU port states’ individual contribution in 2010
PORT STATE
SHIP CALLS
INSPECTION RATIO
DETENTION RATIO
% INSPECTIONS
% DETENTIONS
Italy*
6399
3.2
53.8
31.1
1.9
Slovenia
898
3.4
32.1
29.7
3.1
Croatia
1366
3.3
85.4
30.5
1.2
Greece*
3369
3.3
71.7
30.3
1.4
TOTAL-27
80119
3.3
101.4
30.0
1.0
* Do not only involve ports of the Adriatic-Ionian region.
Shipping safety challenge in the Adriatic-Ionian region
The main shipping safety challenge within the Adriatic-Ionian is highly
depended upon the level of situational awareness within the region. To this
extent, maritime surveillance is a crucial requirement in order to deal with
all safety issues, such as clandestine immigration, smuggling and
substandard shipping practices which may lead to operational pollution or
shipping accidents.
In meeting this challenge, it is vital to push towards the development of
interoperable and integrated systems of real-time situational awareness for
effective emergency response, building on the capabilities offered by
existing systems (terrestrial and spaceborne AIS data, LRIT , ADRIREP and
others) and the experience gained through the implementation of various
international and EU programs and initiatives (e.g. e-Navigation, SAFEMED I
& II, DSS-DC, TOSCA, SafeSeaNet, CleanSeaNet etc).
Essential prerequisites in meeting the shipping safety
challenge in the Adriatic-Ionian region
 Removal of legislative barriers which hinder cross-border cooperation (with
emphasis on resolving maritime delimitation issues between bordering states of the
Adriatic-Ionian region).
 The eight coastal states involved need to ‘strike a balance’ between the national
regulation domain, EU and international law and regional/sub-regional cooperation
based on commonalities.

Develop common understanding on required data.

Address commercial and confidentiality issues.
 Integrate shipping into the logistic chain (e.g. D2D trucking) throughout the
region (inc. port interconnectivity and SafeSeaNet-port connectivity).
 Promote automatic data retrieval and processing (i.e. reduce manual information
workload onboard and ashore).
 Encourage coordinated actions between EU and non-EU states and European and
international agencies (e.g. EMSA, REMPEC, Paris MoU).
A DSS for maritime emergency response
The proposed DSS is a single-window Web-based integrated data
management system that incorporates static base layers along with realtime streams of data (e.g., weather, ship tracking data, etc.) into a fast,
user-friendly Geographic Information System (GIS) that is accessible to the
Emergency Response Command.
The application is based on Open Source software (Google Maps) that
ensures compatibility with other commercial and Open Source GIS
applications (e.g. ArcIMS by ESRI). By overlaying diverse spatial datasets,
the user is able to see the full spectrum of an incident including potential
interactions, namely ship traffic, distressed vessel drift, oil spill trajectory,
resources at risk (sensitivity mapping) and response resources mapping.
Architecture & functionality of emergency DSS
DSS throughput and connectivity
Conclusion
Within the framework of maritime emergency response in high risk seas,
such as the Adriatic-Ionian region, quick and reliable decision making is vital
for minimising consequences to all coastal states involved and to land-lock
states which gravitate in this sea region.
However, in a moment of crisis, effective decision making relies on full
situational awareness and ultimately on our capacity to retrieve and
process real-time data with regard to the development of the risk and our
response capabilities.
Shipping activity and vulnerabilities in the Adriatic-Ionian region dictate the
need for a unified maritime emergency response to which a single-window
Web-based DSS acting as an integrator of relevant standardised data may
prove to be a powerful tool for application at a local, regional, national and
international scale.
It’s nice to be close, but it’s risky.
Thank you.