Safety & assurance

Safety & Assurance

Work Package 4

Safety & Assurance

Our objective is to research and develop novel methods, models and tools for risk management and safe design and operations of autonomous ships.

This work package will focus on risk reduction, mitigation strategies, and safe solutions for the design and operation of autonomous ships. This achievement relies on the ability to identify the new risks and incorporate necessary (technical, software, security, human and organisational) measures into the systems, the operation, and the associated infrastructure.

The main research tasks are:

  • Task 4.1, which focuses on risk management in operation, and the need to monitor system condition, act upon, and mitigate consequences of hazardous events.
  • Task 4.2, which targets the integration of safety in design phases and fail-safe solutions.
  • Tasks in 4.3, which focuses on system verification and simulation, including cost-efficient approaches to testing and simulations.
  • Task 4.4, which evaluates the implication of autonomous operations and risk acceptance in the context of liability and maritime laws, as well as how assurance tools, standards, and rules can cover the new aspects of autonomous operations.

Projects

Projects

PhD projects

PhD projects

  • Online risk modeling of autonomous ships, Susanna Dybwad Kristensen
  • Risk acceptance and operational constraints in risk modeling of autonomous operations, Spencer Dugan
  • Safety demonstration of autonomous control systems using digital twin, Raffael Wallner
  • The application of the international regulations for preventing collision at sea (COLREGS 1972) to autonomous vessels, Ayoub Tailoussane
  • Marine cybernetics and safety for autonomous ships, Emir Cem Gezer
  • Safety assessment and verification of collision avoidance algorithms for autonomous ships, Sreekant Sreedharan
  • AI and data-driven safety management in operation of autonomous ships, Jon Estil Jon Estil Krågebakk

Postdoc research

Postdoc research

  • Dynamic and simulation-based risk modeling for operational decision support and verification, Alojz Gomola (completed)
  • Supervisory risk analysis and control in operation, Paul Lee

Recent publications

Recent publications

Journal articles:

Spencer Dugan and Ingrid B. Utne (2024). "Statistical analysis of vessel loss of command frequency", Maritime Transport Research. 

Emir Cem Gezer and Roger Skjetne (2024). "Manuevering-based Dynamic Thrust Allocation for Fully-Actuated Vessels", IFAC-PapersOnLine. 

Alojz Gomola and Ingrid B. Utne (2024). "A novel STPA approach to software safety and security in autonomous maritime systems", Heliyon. 

Susanna Dybwad Kristensen, Alberto Dalliolio and Ingrid B. Utne (2024). "A systems approach to hazard identification for solar-powered and wave-propelled unmanned surface vehicle", Journal of Marine Engineering & Technology. 

Susanna Dybwad Kristensen, Roger Skjetne and Ingrid B. Utne (2024). "Comparison of methods for using risk information in path planning for autonomous surface vessels", Journal of Physics: Conference Series. 

Mathias Marley, Roger Skjetne and Andrew R. Teel (2024). "Hybrid Control Barrier Functions for Continuous-Time Systems", IEEE Trransactions on Automatic Control. 

Samieh Najjaran and Roger Skjetne (2024). "Multi-Horizon Model Predictive Control for Energy Management in Zero-Emission High-Speed Passenger Vessels", Journal of Physics: Conference Series. 

Namireddy Praveen Reddy, Roger Skjetne, Oliver Os and Dimitrios Papageorgiou (2024). "A Comparison of the State-of-the-Art Reinforcement Learning Algorithms for Health-Aware Energy and Emissions Management in Zero-Emission Ships", IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Industrial Electronics. 

 

Conference papers/ seminars: 

Spencer Dugan and Ingrid B. Utne (2024). "Development of a risk indicator for ship drifting groundings", 17th International Conference on Prohabilistic Safety Assessment and Management & Asian Symposium on Risk Assessment and Management (PSAM17&ASRAM2024). 

Emir Cem Gezer and Roger Skjetne (2024). "Maneuvering-based Dybamic Thrust Allocation for Fully-Actuated Vessels", 15th IFAC Conference on Control Applications in Marine Systems, Robotics and Vehicles. 

Susanna Dybwad Kristensen, Sondre Solvang and Lex Veerhuis (2024). "Risk assessment and supervisory risk control of autonomous marine systems", SFI AutoShip webinar. 

Sreekant Sreedharan, Muthuraja Eamachandran, Erik Røsæg and Børge Rokseth (2024). "Safety Assurances in Autonomous Vessels", International Conference on Conceptual Modeling 2024. 

Ingrid Utne, Børge Rokseth and Mary Ann Lundteigen (2024). "Systems-theoretic process analysis (STPA) tutorial", Tutorial for all partners in SFI AutoShip.