Half of the maritime incidents recorded in 2022 occurred in ports and terminals, reports Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG)-focused digital maritime platform RightShip.
There were 2,400 incidents in 2022 where the location was recorded. RightShip said that half of the incidents occurred for vessels in the ports and terminals environments, and most of those (813) were in ports and harbours when docked. The data was collected from various sources, including PSC, MOUs, classification societies, flag states, shipowner and managers self-reporting.
Yucel Yildiz, RightShip’s Port and Terminal Manager said that “this statistic should be worrying to harbour masters and operations teams. Even though many larger ports are used to manage vessels of varying operational and safety standards each day, the data shows that the inherent risk while the vessel is within a port’s boundary is much larger than we previously thought. Many of these risks are out of the port’s control, and they need to be ready to deal with issues as they occur, while also making sure their operations across all facilities are not disrupted,”
RightShip said that port authorities were aware that that “safety gaps cause accidents or worse, loss of life to seafarers and shore personnel. While port operations teams know it makes commercial sense to attract vessels to your ports and terminals environment, incidents can result in pollution, property damage, and delays, or a combination of these. The impact of these incidents on the port’s ability to process vessels at the same rate can be severely reduced, which can become very costly”.
Rightship said that ports and terminals needed to gather information effectively to plan and manage risk. “If you can evaluate issues before you accept vessels into berth, and adopt record keeping on departures, you can plan for the risks instead of simply accepting that “accidents happen”, Rightship said.
https://rightship.com/insights/half-maritime-incidents-2022-occurred-ports-and-terminals