The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (MCA) is an executive agency of the United Kingdom working to prevent the loss of lives at sea and is responsible, through the Secretary of State for Transport to Parliament, for implementing British and international maritime law and safety policy. It is also responsible for land based search and rescue helicopter operations from 2015.Its responsibilities include coordinating search and rescue (SAR) on the coastline and at sea through Her Majesty's Coastguard (HMCG), ensuring that ships meet international and UK safety standards, monitoring and preventing coastal water pollution and testing and issuing Merchant Navy Certificates of Competency (licences) for ships' officers and crew to STCW requirements. The organisation is led by Brian Johnson The MCA is chiefly responsible for the syllabus and national training standards issued by the Merchant Navy Training Board (based at the UK Chamber of Shipping).The MCA has three distinct "outward facing" elements - provision of search and rescue and prevention activity through Her Majesty's Coastguard, port and flag state control of shipping through a network of Marine Offices and the development of international standards and policy for shipping through the International Maritime Organization.The MCA has now established an automatic identification system (AIS) network around the UK coast, for real-time tracking and monitoring of shipping movements from the shore.MCA utilizes airborne assets in the form of helicopters, fixed wing aircraft and drones for SAR, and other, operations and is going to make greater use of these technologies under the UKSAR2G contract to be awarded in 2024.Its motto is "Safer Lives, Safer Ships, Cleaner Seas"..
Operating on a 24/7 basis has made the maritime industry invent a wide variety of watch keeping systems over the past centuries. These are either two-watch systems (2 teams sharing the work under a 24h period) or three-watch system (3 teams sharing it). This study aims to identify which systems are associated with the lowest amount of fatigue risk and the highest amount of sleep that can possibly be obtained.
The UK Maritime and Coastguard Agency commission research in all areas of its business, primarily: “safer lives, safer ships and cleaner seas”. The current annual R&D budget stands at approximately $1.5 m. Much MCA led research carried out for counter pollution activity is multi-agency collaborative work attracting funds from both the UK public and private sector. The primary objective of this work is to improve the UK’s position to plan for and respond to oil and chemical maritime pollution. Key recent projects include the determination of the limiting viscosity for the use of dispersants in oil spill response; the outcome of this work underpins the MCA dispersant response philosophy in the light of increasing levels of heavy oils transiting UK waters. A comprehensive investigation into the potential ecological effects of the use of dispersants was concluded in 2004. The UK coastal and marine resource atlas, a GIS platform capturing 100 layers of environmental sensitivities, provides planners with a comprehensive reference tool. New projects recently approved by the MCA Research Committee include: A new GIS platform to present potentially polluting wrecks in UK waters, a very heavy fuel oil risk assessment, a risk assessment for Hazardous and Noxious Substances in UK waters, the design of a waste treatment infrastructure for dealing with significant quantities of oily waste, and the development of a standard shoreline clean-up assessment reporting protocol.
ABSTRACT The concept of an ENVIRONMENT GROUP (EG) was introduced into the UK maritime incident response process shortly after the SEA EMPRESS incident. The Groups role is to provide public health and environmental advice to all response units. The NAPOLI incident presented responders with a highly complex matrix of issues concerned with major salvage, oil pollution at sea and onshore, potential for HNS into the sea and subsequent concerns for environment and public health. Two response cells were set up:- a Salvage Control Unit for all salvage activity and a Marine Response Cell to respond to all pollution at sea. Unusually for a UK incident the response to oil and cargo ashore was dealt with by contractors engaged by the insurers. The NAPOLI EG was set up immediately the container vessel was in difficulties, chaired by a UK Environment Agency officer. The Group was immediately tasked with evaluating the likely impact of a series of possible scenarios involving oil and/or cargo loss. The key to successful management of environmental considerations was the communications network set up between the response cells at Portland Coastguard, the operational EG and the specialist scientists and technicians in UK government departments/agencies. Whilst the EG individual members have specific responsibilities associated with their parent bodies regulatory status, the Groups remit is to present one voice to the response cells when consulted on any issue. That process can be challenging when meeting short timelines. Advice taskings were essentially split between immediate environmental consultations e.g use of dispersants in the event of a spill, and discrete “project” risk evaluations and monitoring protocols e.g. modeling of releases of specific cargo and development of risk assessments and worst case scenarios. Project work was typically carried out by people away from the operations centre thus freeing up the operational EG to concentrate on live issues on a day by day basis. The operational EG maintained regular conference calls with UK government specialists to discuss the need for, the modus operandi and the progress and outcomes of environmental monitoring.
In anticipation of the forthcoming new harmonised regulations for damage stability, SOLAS Chapter II-1, proposed in IMO MSC 80 and due for enforcement in 2009, a number of ship owners and consequentially yards and classification societies are venturing to exploit the new degrees of freedom afforded by the probabilistic concept of ship subdivision. In this process, designers are finding it rather difficult to move away from the prescription mindset that has been deeply ingrained in their way of conceptualising, creating and completing a ship design. Total freedom it appears is hard to cope with and a helping hand is needed to guide them in crossing the line from prescriptive to goal-setting design. This will be facilitated considerably with improved understanding of what this concept entails and of its limitations and range of applicability. This paper represents an attempt in this direction, based on the results of a research study, financed by the Maritime and Coastguard Agency in the UK, to assess the design implications of the new harmonised rules on passenger and cargo ships.
