Design Competition for Safe Affordable Ferries

 

Registration opened for Third annual International Student Design Competition for Safe Affordable Ferries.

Today the Worldwide Ferry Safety Association (WFSA) announced its latest competition for a Safe Affordable Ferry, with entries being sought from naval architectural students from all over the world. WFSA’s Executive Director, Dr. Roberta Weisbrod, said: “The goal of the design competition, now in its third year, is to elicit new approaches for ferry design for and with the developing world, where there are still many accidents. We also hope to encourage designers to enter this arena, where we see both an urgent need and real business opportunities in an emerging market.”

Focus on Indonesia, a nation of islands: The 2015 Design Competition for a Safe Affordable Ferry will be focused on an Indonesian inter‐island RoPax vessel. Indonesia is the fourth largest nation in the world in terms of population. Composed of 6,000 inhabited islands, the archipelago spreads across over 3,000 miles from the Indian Ocean to the Pacific Ocean near Australia.  Seeking to build on its geography and its seafaring traditions, Indonesia’s new leaders, who came into office in late 2014, have stressed the importance of policies that will enhance its maritime strength.  One stated goal of these policies is to improve inter‐island connectivity through ferry transport.

However, ferry transport between islands has lacked an adequate level of safety. Between 2000 and 2015, 37accidents have occurred in Indonesia, leaving 2,286 people dead or missing, according to data gathered by the WFSA and Interferry (an association with consultative status at the IMO, representing the ferry industry world‐wide). Of great value for safety is that the country’s National Transportation Safety Committee has performed in‐depth casualty investigations and identified major factors. The analysis of casualties between 2003 and 2013, performed as part of a World Maritime University (WMU) Master’s thesis, has identified significant patterns, which highlighted the issue of fires on RoPax. This issue is globally important given recent incidents.

To Registerlog on to www.ferrysafetydesigncompetition.org. Student teams who register before the September 15 deadline will be provided with the Terms of Reference. Collaboration among academic institutions is encouraged. Entries will be due on March 1, 2016.

Contact info: Dr. Roberta Weisbrod, Executive Director of the Worldwide Ferry Safety Association, at [email protected], or by at telephone: +1 718 722 2824