Maritime Spatial Planning as a tool for ecosystem-based adaptive safety management of maritime transportation system in the Gulf of Finland (Baltic Sea)

Abstract

The Maritime Spatial Planning (MSP) is becoming an increasingly important tool for adaptive safety management of maritime transportation system (MTS) being ecosystem-based, integrated, place-based or area-based, adaptive, strategic, anticipatory and participatory iterative process. At the same time the rapid developments in ship intelligence are transforming the future of marine operations and are adding the new complexity to adaptive safety management of MTS. In this study in progress the ships' routing design is considered to be an important safety-critical element of ecosystem-based transboundary MSP solutions in the Gulf of Finland sea area. The STPA hazard analysis methodology is applied to identify ships' routing design related system level hazards, corresponding safety constraints and the potentially unsafe control actions that may lead to ships' routing hazardous design. To avoid ships' routing hazardous design flaws the implementation of safety-guided design is suggested with aim to embed the cost-effective safety effort into the ships' routing design process from the very beginning and to design safety into the system as the design decisions are made.