SUNY Maritime to Host e-Navigation Conference
The e-Navigation Underway 2015 – North America conference will be hosted by The State University of New York (SUNY) Maritime College from September 28 to 30 on the college’s Throggs Neck, N.Y. campus.
The conference’s theme is: “Reducing Risk through E-Navigation,” which follows the pace of the IMO’s Correspondence Group on e-Navigation.
The keynote speaker will be Joseph Trotti, CEO of AIG Global Marine and Aerospace, and Francis Zachariae, the new Secretary General of the International Association of Marine Aids to Navigation and Lighthouse Authorities (IALA) and formerly the deputy director general of Danish Maritime Authority (DMA), will be the luncheon speaker on the conference’s final day.
Other confirmed speakers include Tracy Murrell, Director Office of Marine Safety, U.S. National Transportation Safety Board; John Erik Hagen, Regional Director of the Norwegian Coastal Administration and Chair of the IMO's e-Navigation Correspondence Group; and Helen Brohl, Executive Director of the Committee for the Marine Transportation System, U.S. Department of Transportation.
This second annual e-Navigation conference is hosted and managed by Maritime College in cooperation with IALA and DMA. It will be a regional version of the international e-Navigation Underway conference.
The conference will focus on the development and exploitation of e-navigation for the “...harmonized collection, integration, exchange, presentation and analysis of maritime information onboard and ashore by electronic means to enhance berth-to-berth navigation and related services, for safety and security at sea and protection of the marine environment.”
Organizers say the material to be covered during the conference is relevant to the training and educational role of maritime academic institutions and other training facilities, as groundings, allisions and collisions remain unacceptably high, imposing cost upon the maritime community, the environment and general economy.
Statistically, the major contributing cause of all incidents is human error. The effective use of e-navigation is an important tool by which to reduce such incidents, a conclusion borne out by statistics from segments of the industry where significant efforts have been made to fully incorporate e-navigation into bridge management procedures.
The conference’s four sessions will examine the following topics:
- To what degree did improper use of, or unfamiliarity with, technology – particularly AIS and ECDIS – contribute to errors?
- Did the lack of proper integration of all resources for Bridge Resource Management essentially set-up bridge team failures?
- To what degree did management’s focus on e-navigation as a tool for cost reduction, rather than safety, contribute to navigation?
- What additional or changed technological or infrastructure measures are needed to insure near-term improvements in BRM?
A fifth session will review the highpoints of the conference, and in a moderated general discussion, develop conclusions and recommendations to be incorporated in a widely-disseminated final report.
