Paradigms of safety of classical and autonomous shipping

Mulina Elena Vadimovna Postgraduate student; Nautical Institute; Kaliningrad State Technical University Second Mate STV Sedov; Kaliningrad State Technical University 6 Molodezhnaya str., Kaliningrad region, 236029, Russia mulina409@gmail.com

Ermakov Sergey Vladimirovich PhD in Technical Science Director; Nautical Institute; Kaliningrad State Technical University 6 Molodezhnaya str., Kaliningrad, Kaliningrad region, 236035, Russia esv.klgd@mail.ru Other publications by this author

Introduction

The main goal of the development of the marine fleet is currently autonomous navigation ^[1-4]. There are two obvious reasons for this goal setting: human-centered and economic. The exclusion of a person from the procedures related to the operation of the fleet will remove the problem of threats to his life and health, and, in addition, will remove the human factor from among the causes of marine accidents and incidents. At the same time, shipping by sea will become cheaper and more reliable.

Over the past few years, various states and organizations have launched and tested a considerable number of completely different concepts of autonomous vessels. One of the latest prototypes was the Korean cargo ship POS Singapore, which began operating between Korea and Southeast Asia in a test mode last fall. In December 2023, the ferry General Chernyakhovsky passed through our country in an autonomous mode along the Ust-Luga-Kaliningrad route.

One of the criteria for optimal human activity at sea (and, in our opinion, the main one) is the safety of this activity. "Safety first!" — "Safety first." This slogan is actively used all over the world to indicate the priority of human life in the production process. At the same time, each industry has its own security paradigm, but, as a rule, it is rarely fully formalized. There is also a safety paradigm in shipping. Here, under the safety of navigation, it is necessary to understand the state of protection of objects defined as safety facilities from the effects of dangerous factors during the operation of marine vessels. In this case, the navigation safety paradigm can be defined as a set of objects, subjects, values, concepts, positions, ideas, methods, and experiences that set the logic for organizing actions and determine the process and result of achieving the highest possible level of navigation safety in a certain period of time.

Assuming that the development and phased integration of autonomous marine surface vessels into the global marine fleet will lead to an evolution and eventually a paradigm shift in navigation safety, in the framework of this work we will separate classical and autonomous navigation as well as the corresponding safety paradigms.

As a result, the purpose of this work is the linguistic formalization and comparative analysis of the existing paradigm of classical navigation safety and the hypothetical paradigm of autonomous navigation safety, taking into account the evolutionary paradigm shift.

The safety paradigm of classical shipping

Maritime navigation is one of the few sectors of the economy where two spaces permanently practically coincide.: The noxosphere is a space of dangers, and the homosphere is the space in which a person carries out his activities ^{[5, 6]}. The aggressive marine environment, complex and intensive technological processes of both ship movement and loading and unloading operations, the peculiarities of labor activity associated with the need to stay in a confined space for a long time and, as a rule, in in a small society, these and other sources of danger are objectively an integral part of human activities at sea. Separately, as a source of danger, it is necessary to single out the so—called "human factor" - human errors of various natures that lead or may lead to a marine accident or incident.

By now, such a risky nature of human activity at sea has formed a paradigm of navigation safety based on four components and safety facilities (Fig. 1).

Fig. 1. The general structure of the concept of "safety of navigation"

However, it should be noted that despite this categorization, all types of security are closely interrelated, and the common and only direct or indirect object of security is a person, his life, health and comfortable existence.

Thus, the safety of the marine environment as an ecosystem determines the living conditions of an individual and a society in a separate territory. Any realized danger in this case entails a deterioration in living conditions, and often in a drastic way, leading to population migration. The consequences of the spill of more than 40,000 tons of oil due to the stranding of the Exxon Valdez tanker, which occurred in 1989 off the coast of Alaska, have not yet been eliminated. NOAA biologist Gary Shigenaka, who has been involved in the aftermath of the accident for a long time, noted the constant presence of fresh oil. The spill affected more than 1,300 miles of coastline, having a tremendous impact on fish, wildlife and their habitats, as well as on local businesses and communities ^[7]. Many residents, having lost the opportunity to engage in traditional fishing, left the coast.

The mediation of human safety by ship safety is obvious and does not require any evidence. Any potential or realized danger of a vessel simultaneously means that there is a danger to the life and health of people on board this vessel. In fact, the same can be attributed to the safety of shipping lanes (marine infrastructure). Errors in the designation or lack of designation of the fairway, problems with artificial navigation landmarks, and inconsistencies in the depths indicated on the maps are sources of danger to the vessel and, consequently, to any member of its crew.

The current paradigm of shipping safety is global. Any actions for its formation, modification and development can be initiated by any State, and through the International Maritime Organization (IMO) accepted at an imperative or dispositive level by the entire global maritime community. The current international legal framework for maritime navigation, most of which has been implemented into national legislation, contains a large number of conventions, codes and resolutions, the provisions of which, as part of the safety paradigm, regulate many of its aspects. Participants in maritime transport at one time pinned great hope on the International Code for the Management of the Safe Operation of Ships and Pollution Prevention (International Safety Management Code — ISM Code) ^[8], which entered into force in 1998, but the document did not justify these hopes. Thus, according to V. A. Bondarev, the ISM Code's attempt to avoid in-depth analysis of security issues or management, the introduction of risk criteria and methods for its formal accounting only confused the situation even more. In many countries, they began to return to the concept of ensuring security, since it was not possible to manage security based on the ISM Code ^[9].

In turn, in one of the reports at a meeting of the Union of Russian Shipowners, it was noted that "... Russian shipowners fulfilled all the requirements of the ISM Code regarding the certification of safety management systems (SMS), but after receiving the certificates, they calmed down. Not everyone properly understands the objectives of the ISM Code, and if such a position is taken by the heads of companies, then the entire maritime safety system is doomed to failure" ^[10].

Thus, the described paradigm is, in fact, the paradigm of "paper security". The term "paper security" has already become practically ingrained in the maritime industry and has acquired a sharply negative connotation, with paper security being contrasted with real security, although, in fact, it should be an integral part of it. However, in reality, the approach to the organization of the SMS is often formal and bureaucratic in nature. A real-time security management strategy focused on current circumstances and needs is often replaced in companies with documents of several hundred pages that are outdated by the time they are approved. The system is organized not to manage security as such, but to meet the requirements of the ISM Code, and to "fit" the true ISM Code goals related to security to economic goals. And all because the management and staff consider the SMS to be nothing more than an additional administrative burden. At the same time, the load is perceived as useless or, at best, ineffective — within the same company with the introduction of the SMS, the number of ship accidents within a fixed period of time may not change, the process of ensuring the safety of navigation by the ship's captain is not interrupted, and the system requires a lot of resources. The following thesis can be given as an explanation for this phenomenon. The relationship between quality and profit in manufacturing companies is more pronounced than the relationship between safety and profit in shipping companies, and the principles of the construction and functioning of the QMS of the former and the DBMS of the latter are practically the same. So why do more if it doesn't affect profits? On ships, in addition, there is a tendency to reduce crews and increase responsibilities per crew member ^[11], and any additional responsibilities (albeit related to safety management) are perceived by captains and crew members without enthusiasm. The absurd requirements of the Company's management System sometimes contribute to the rejection of the safety management principles laid down by the ISM Code among seafarers. So, one of the types of nonconformity messages sent from ships are messages about "near misses" — events that did not lead, but could lead to damage, breakdowns, accidents, etc. These messages are written by direct participants in the events who have noticed a potential problem. Some Companies "lower" the ship's plan — for example, one niarmiss per person per day. In this way, the Company "provides" feedback to the vessel, and the "implementation" of the nonconformity report procedure.

The last arguments, among other things, are an introduction to the problem of the reverse side of the security paradigm, which lies in the antagonism of safety and profit existing in the maritime industry. Despite all the declarations of safety as the primary category on which all human activities at sea are based, in reality, as a rule, profit is the dominant category. So, for example, if in theory the main criterion for planning a ship's transition is safety, then in practice it is often necessary to deliver cargo to its destination as quickly as possible. This applies not only to the route of the vessel, but also to the speed of its movement. For example, the results of a study of the speed regime of vessels that passed through the open part of the Kaliningrad Sea Canal in 2015-2016 showed that 52.9% of 2,518 vessels exceeded the set speed ^[12]. On February 18, 2015, while crossing from Belfast, Ireland, to Skogn, Norway, the Lysblink Seaways cargo ship ran aground at full speed near Kilhoan (Ardnamurchan Peninsula, Western Scotland) ^[7]. On April 16, 2007, the Bahamian gas carrier Gas Monarch was sailing in the North Sea at maximum speed, which it did not reduce even when diverging from the yacht Whispa ^[13]. The speed of the gas carrier, which was much higher than the safe speed at divergence, did not allow a collision to be avoided.

The most catastrophic consequences of the rule of profit over safety are the loss of life, as happened, for example, with the crew of the cement truck Cemfjord. At 13:00 on December 30, 2014, the ship left the port of Rordal (Denmark) and headed for the British port of Runcorn. On January 2, 2015, Cemfjord, late for Runcorn, under pressure from economic circumstances, without waiting for favorable conditions, entered the Pentland Firth Strait with a strong (6 knots) tail current separating the island of Great Britain from the Orkney Islands, reduced speed relative to the ground to 7 knots (relative to water to 1 knot), lost control, it turned around with a lag towards the wave and capsized ^[14]. The rapid nature of the situation prevented the crew from sending a distress signal and leaving the ship in a timely manner. The emergency buoy was trapped in the overturned hull of the vessel. The cement truck was discovered only 25 hours later from aboard a passing ferry and sank almost immediately after discovery. All eight crew members were pronounced dead.

The antagonism between profit and safety is confirmed by the above-mentioned trend towards a reduction in ship crews. Safety requires an increase in the number of personnel, at least in order to create conditions for effective performance of their duties through proper rest, in turn, the desire to save money (and, consequently, to increase profits) leads to its reduction.

Of course, the main purpose of merchant shipping is to make a profit, and at first glance, the paradigm of shipping safety should be based on some reasonable balance of economic and human-centered interests. However, there are at least three reasons that make this task impossible. First, comparing profit and a person is ethically unacceptable. In fact, this is a question of monetization of human life. Secondly, a reasonable balance here is more of an abstract construct that requires a full and complete understanding of what risk is and what risk is acceptable. However, until now, despite the multiplicity of definitions and calculation algorithms, risk and acceptable risk remain intuitive categories. Thirdly, the inevitable coexistence of the security paradigm and the desire for profit occurs in the absence of any balance between them. The proof of this is the continuing accident rate of the navy vessels. At the same time, the most common cause of marine accidents and incidents — the human factor — should also be linked to the economic aspect of shipping. Savings on salaries of both full-time and reduced seamen, unwillingness to invest in the primary theoretical and practical training of specialists, including the development of the training and production fleet, leads to the appearance on board ships of such workers, whose professional aptitude does not allow them to avoid unforced errors.

As a result, the modern global paradigm of navigation safety is externally positioned and declared as an existing set of official provisions and principles, which, if properly implemented, are practically sufficient to achieve the level of navigation safety that is only possible under the existing conditions of human activity at sea.

In fact, the safety paradigm is almost entirely based on the natural sense of self-preservation, rational thinking, will, experience and knowledge of the crew members of naval vessels. When any of these components disappear (even temporarily), what happened to the cement carrier Cemfjord in the Pentland Firth happens.

The evolution of the navigation safety paradigm.

The safety paradigm of autonomous navigation

At first glance, freeing people from the need to be present on board autonomous marine surface vessels (MANS) will lead to a fundamental change in the security paradigm and will change the main object of security. However, only time will tell the truth of this thesis, but one thing is certain — the development of autonomous navigation will simultaneously initiate a modification (evolution) of the navigation safety paradigm. To analyze the possible path of this evolution, we will use the periodization presented in ^[15].

According to this periodization, the development of MANS is currently at the intersection of two periods — the period of theories and concepts and the period of concepts and pilot projects. It is obvious that during these periods the safety paradigm does not change, or rather, the safety paradigm of autonomous navigation begins to develop in parallel, forming its primary foundations that have not yet been widely applied.

These fundamentals include a set of methods, algorithms and technologies that will ensure the operation of the MANS. However, it should be noted that there is currently a phenomenon that can be described as a chaos of methodologies. The current trend towards research in the field of autonomous navigation has led to the emergence of many scientific publications with results, the practical implementation of most of which has not yet been announced. For example, only ^[16] presents an analysis of more than twenty published MANC divergence methods.

At the same time, the methods, algorithms, and technologies (discrepancies, etc.) already implemented in the prototypes are understandably inaccessible to the general scientific community. Perhaps one of the three principles of the theory of evolution will work in the end, but parallel research and the understandable and objective reluctance of developers to join forces and disseminate information obviously slow down the development of autonomous navigation technologies and make research synergy impossible. Moreover, until this happens, it will be difficult to develop a unified approach to managing an autonomous fleet, as well as a security paradigm.

Here it is also necessary to indicate the possibility of substitution of concepts. The potential emergence, development and implementation of single-purpose or multi-purpose decision support systems on ships without releasing the seafarer from responsibility and the obligation to participate (even as an observer-control) in the technological process directly on the ship does not mean that the ship becomes autonomous. In this case, the degree of automation of the vessel increases, and the seaman may indeed have a significantly reduced amount of functionality, but no more. On the same basis, the first steam-powered vessels could be called autonomous, when human and wind power were replaced by horse power, and ship crews were reduced by tens and hundreds of people.

The appearance of the first autonomous marine surface vessels in the world fleet, their entry into sea routes and lines, the beginning of industrial, i.e. full-scale operational operation will indicate the beginning of a period of primary integration and the emergence of the first wave of MANS expansion, the front of which will be the first remotely piloted vessels. At this point, the security paradigms of the classical and autonomous fleets will begin to overlap, forming a common transitional paradigm, but at the same time, the security paradigm of the autonomous fleet will acquire clear independent features. In any case, at least the legal framework for the operation of MANS should be fully developed at the beginning of the initial integration period. In fact, it is during this period that a person's place in the security paradigm will change. An external captain operating a ship remotely will be less a security object and more a person responsible for the safety of the ship, the marine environment, infrastructure and cargo. Naturally, the dangers in the professional activity of an external captain will remain, but they will be determined more by factors similar to those that make up the noxosphere of a computer operator, as well as by the stress of responsibility.

Naturally, the principles of training boatmasters (external captains) will change. At the same time, attention should be paid to a problem that is more psychological in nature and relates to those external captains who had experience in classical navigation. With remote piloting, being emotionally and intellectually separated from the controlled vessel, it is likely that they will not be able to fully assess the navigation situation as they previously did on the bridge of the vessel and make the right decision.

In the next period, the period of MANS parity, when the number of remotely piloted vessels will reach a third of the total number of the world fleet, the safety paradigm of the autonomous fleet will continue to individualize and separate from the safety paradigm of the classical fleet. It is during this period that autonomous marine surface vessels will be allocated their own sea lanes, where MANS will navigate without the presence of traditionally manned vessels. At the same time, the rules and culture of interaction between external captains will become the basis of a completely independent safety paradigm for autonomous navigation, and the ship and the marine environment will be the main objects of safety.

It should be assumed that during the period of parity there will be a second wave of MANC expansion, when fully autonomous (unmanned) vessels will appear on the shipping lanes.

The problem of simultaneous navigation of unmanned and manned vessels should be identified here. Despite the allocation of shipping lanes for an autonomous fleet, situations of interaction and divergence between man and machine (as subjects of decision-making) are unlikely to be avoided. Proposals on the technical, organizational and legal bases of such interaction have already been presented in ^[17]. However, the psychological, in fact, quasi-economic aspect of this problem has not yet been analyzed. It is known that the psychological determinant of work on board a ship, including a healthy microclimate in the ship's crew, the psychological state of each of its members, etc., largely determines the effectiveness of the ship. It should be expected that with the advent and development of the MANS, the psychological determinant of the crews of traditional vessels will undergo negative qualitative changes with a peak during the parity period. The crews of such vessels will be sailors who have either already lost more profitable and familiar jobs, or who are aware of the obvious threat of losing their jobs in the near future. Such a situation can trigger unhealthy competition, decreased motivation, depression, and aggressive attitude towards autonomous vessels navigating in the same water area, and, as a result, significantly increase the likelihood of a marine accident caused by the "human factor." Thus, manned vessels with crews may at some point become a clear threat to the autonomous fleet.

The next period will be the period of MANCE hegemony. Its starting point can be considered the moment when two-thirds of the world's fleet will be determined by autonomous vessels. During this period, the scope of operation of such vessels will be significantly expanded to include the main international transport routes with MANX-oriented models and rules of maritime transportation.

This is followed by the MANS monopoly period, for which traditional manned vessels with a crew on board will become extremely rare. During this period, remotely piloted vessels and unmanned vessels will be located side by side in the world's oceans. When the latter displace the former and make them an exception, a period of complete autonomy of the ships of the world fleet will begin.

It is during the period of full autonomy of the fleet that the security paradigm of the autonomous fleet will be finally formed. A person who, at best, will retain control and supervisory functions (or, more mildly, monitoring functions) will be practically removed from the security paradigm, reserving only the role of a security object in society mediated through the environment.

The main object of safety will be the marine environment, while it should be assumed that the likelihood of environmental hazards from the MANS will already be much less than it is now from classic manned vessels with crews. Firstly, electric motors, which are already used on many existing concepts, are likely to become energy sources for the movement of MANTS. The development of electricity generation technologies will make them more environmentally friendly and energy-intensive. As a result, operational environmental pollution will be minimized. Secondly, the introduction of a unified autonomous management system for the global autonomous fleet will minimize ship accidents and, consequently, accidental environmental pollution.

The ship as a security facility will become secondary for several reasons. The first of these is the absence of a human on board, which, by the way, will primarily lead to the disappearance (or simplification) of the Global Maritime Disaster Communications System (GMDSS) ^[18-20]. The second reason is the reduction in the cost of ships due to changes in their architecture — superstructures and living quarters will disappear. Vessels of a fundamentally new architecture, hermetically sealed capsules with zero stability, may appear for the transportation of goods for which movement is not critical.

The development of digital twin technology ^[21-24], methodology and technical support for big data processing procedures, and the achievement of almost absolute reliability, accuracy, and stability of satellite navigation and communications systems will make it possible to build the already mentioned unified autonomous control system for the global autonomous fleet. Each autonomous vessel will be provided with a full—fledged (fully functional) digital twin immediately at the time of the vessel's commissioning, and at the same time the digital twin will be integrated into a single system that will manage the operation of all vessels of the world's autonomous fleet offline - path selection, traffic and ship separation, mooring, etc. In this context, the security paradigm of the autonomous fleet must include another security object, information, as a matter of priority. The information security of the autonomous fleet here is the state of security of its information environment from unauthorized access and from technical and software failures.

Despite the exclusion of humans from all technological chains of operation of the autonomous fleet, the human factor in its activities will remain. Thus, in ^[25], the external structure of the human factor is presented and described, the essence of which is that when any problem arises during the operation of the fleet, there will always be a person who, at some level removed from the problem (the level of the human factor), will be its trigger.

For example, the digital twin technology mentioned above is not yet in the state required for a fully autonomous fleet. However, the task of developing this technology is a task performed by a human, and a human is capable of making mistakes. Here we can talk about two levels of the human factor. The first of these is the level of scientific and technological participation, which implies the vices not of using technology, but of the vices of technology itself. In other words, the body of knowledge relevant to a specific subject area and intended, among other things, for technology development has been applied incorrectly. As a result, the technology turns out to be flawed, and its use does not lead to the expected and planned results.

However, the technology may be problematic not because of a mistake by its developers, but because of gaps in the body of knowledge. However, these gaps are also related to the human factor and determine the level of manifestation of the human factor associated with scientific and theoretical support of navigation (the level of scientific and theoretical participation). However, here we are not talking about a human error as such, but about the insufficient scientific and heuristic search for new knowledge by the scientific community.

Thus, and taking into account the current chaos of methodologies, the autonomous fleet security paradigm should include, among other things, technology security, which here should be understood as the state of protection of autonomous fleet technologies from design errors that lead to visible or latent distortion of the purpose and results of its use.

Conclusion.

The results of the study of the safety paradigms of classical and autonomous navigation and their relationship are the following conclusions:

- the main object of security in the modern paradigm is a person;

- de jure, the safety paradigm of classical navigation is based on a set of regulatory requirements, often fulfilled formally, de facto it is almost entirely based on a natural sense of self-preservation, rational thinking, will, experience and knowledge of people who directly operate ships.;

- Currently, autonomous navigation is at the initial stage of its development, and the corresponding safety paradigm is at the stage of formation.;

- in the course of the development and phased integration of the MANS into maritime navigation (in the process of the evolution of the navigation safety paradigm), a person will lose the status of the main object of safety, at the same time information and technology will be included in the number of such objects.

The arguments and conclusions presented in the paper are part of the theoretical and methodological foundations of research, the object of which is the safety of navigation, autonomous navigation and autonomous sea surface vessels. In addition, the main theses of the work confirm the relevance of such research and the beneficial prospects of autonomous navigation.