Emergency Management Systems to Accommodate Ships in Distress (original) (raw)

As a future member of the European Union (EU), Croatia has decided to implement EU Directive 2002/59/EC of the European Parliament and of the Council binding all EU member states to define places of refuge for ships in need of assistance off their coasts, or to develop techniques for providing assistance to such ships. Consequently, the Ministry of the Sea, Tourism, Transport and Development of the Republic of Croatia has initiated a project for developing an effective Decision Support System (DSS) for defining the places of refuge for ships in distress at sea. Such a system would include a model based upon GIS and different operational research models, which would eventually result in establishing an integral DSS. Starting points for analysis are shipping corridors, and 380 potential locations for places of refuge designated in the official navigational pilot book. Multicriteria analysis, with GIS-generated input data, would be used to establish worthiness of a place of refuge for each ship category, taking into account kinds of accident. Tables of available intervention resources would be made, as well as analysis of their availability in respect of response time, and quantitative and qualitative sufficiency.