23.03.07
International conference on towing and salvage of disabled tankers 2007.
Project Description
SAFETOW will provide masters of disabled vessels and masters of salvage and escort tugs with support tools which will enable them to take decisions in real-time with the best available information regarding the consequence of their actions.
The project will encompass an experimental programme which will collect the manoeuvring data, including manoeuvring with more than one tug. The analysed data will be used as a basis for software modelling. The software will be integrated with the vessels' bridge systems to provide real-time help and decision support, training capability and monitoring. Between January 1992 and March 1999 a total of 593 merchant ships were lost. In many of these cases, if SAFETOW had been available there is quite a good probability that the accident would have been avoided. For instance, in the AMOCO CADIZ accident, if action had been taken early enough to control the drift this would have prevented the grounding of the ship and the spilling of 227,000 tons of crude oil, with a cost of about €282 million. If SAFETOW is able to prevent even one such disaster in future it will have paid back many times over the investment being proposed. From the point of view of commercial exploitation, we are forecasting a turn-over of around 20 M€ over the first three years following the end of the project, of which we would expect well over 10 M€ to be profit.
The consortium includes a ship owner association (CONSAR), a Port Authority (Gijon), one of the world's major salvors (SMIT Salvage), a supplier of shipboard navigational systems (SAM Electronics), a salvage association and supplier of manoeuvring simulators (BMT), a classification society (Bureau Veritas) and an academic institution (The University of Glasgow & Strathclyde).