Public defence in mechanical engineering, Sunil Basnet, M.Sc.

Managing risks in maritime remote pilotage using the basis of the Formal Safety Assessment 

The risk of ship accidents is high in busy and narrow waterways. To improve safety in these areas, maritime pilots, who are experienced navigators, board ships to provide expert guidance to the ship crew. As the sustainability and improvements of such safety-critical service are important, Finnish pilotage stakeholders are currently developing a remote pilotage service. Instead of physically boarding ships, the remote pilots will guide vessels from a remote location using technology. Finland is at the forefront of this innovative approach, which has the potential to decrease pilotage operational costs, increase efficiency, and improve safety aspects. However, new risks may emerge due to technological and operational changes, which must be identified and managed. Furthermore, the methods suitable and capable of identifying and managing risks in such advanced operations should be recognized and applied. Hence, this thesis aims to manage risks in remote pilotage using a novel framework that integrates advanced risk management methods. The proposed framework is based on the Formal Safety Assessment framework, which is widely recognized and applied in the maritime domain. The thesis identifies gaps in Formal Safety Assessment and proposes novel solutions to fulfill them. The proposed framework integrates methods such as Model-based System Engineering for developing consistent and concise system description models, System Theoretic Process Analysis for identifying hazards, Bayesian Network for developing risk models, and Influence Diagram for evaluating risk control options based on costs and benefits. The proposed framework is then applied to the remote pilotage operation and the results are detailed in the thesis. These results include remote pilotage system description models, hazard causal factors, estimated risks, and cost-efficient risk control options. Moreover, the thesis also demonstrates an automatic generation of a risk model using a pilotage incident database. In practice, this thesis provides an essential foundation for managing risks in remote pilotage and facilitates its development. Furthermore, it provides tools and methods supporting remote pilotage stakeholders in making risk-based decisions throughout the remote pilotage development.

Opponent: Associate professor Ioannis M. Dokas, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece

Custos: Assistant professor Osiris Valdez Banda, Aalto University School of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering

Contact information of the doctoral student: Sunil Basnet, [email protected], +358451812811

The public defence will be organised on campus (auditorium 216, Otakaari 4) and online.

The thesis is publicly displayed 10 days before the defence in the publication archive Aaltodoc of Aalto University.

Electronic thesis