The college provides education, training, consultancy and research to the international shipping and off-shore oil industries. It is one of the United Kingdom's colleges responsible for the training of the British Merchant Navy. The courses on offer cover a wide range of maritime education and training from deck and engineer officer cadetships, including degree pathways, to senior officer certificates of competency, together with the associated safety training.The current college is split across several sites, with the main academy campus in Southampton City Centre, the practical campus (focusing on survival, medical are firefighting training) in Warsash and the Ship Handling Centre at Timsbury Lake. From 1946 to 2017, the School was primarily located at its historic Warsash site, just east of Southampton aside the River Hamble and Warsash village. In 2017, the school transitioned to new facilities, built at a cost of over £43 million in the city centre. Aside from a few remaining practical course facilities, the majority of the Warsash campus is now being converted to private housing.mw-parser-output .mw-parser-output .mw-parser-output .mw-parser-output .mw-parser-output .mw-parser-output .mw-parser-output .mw-parser-output .mw-parser-output .mw-parser-output .mw-parser-output .mw-parser-output .mw-parser-output .mw-parser-output .mw-parser-output .mw-parser-output .mw-parser-output .mw-parser-output .mw-parser-output .
The geometric distribution of navigational aids is one of the most important elements to be taken into account in the planning of maritime terrestrial navigation systems. It determines to a large extent the capability of vessels to obtain high-precision position coordinates. Therefore, the optimisation of their location is a key element at the planning stage, in particular on port approach fairways. This article attempts to use computer simulation methods to assess the positioning accuracy of a vessel that follows a constant course and speed on a port approach fairway. The analysis uses a technique based on the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) Two-Dimensional (2D) Range-Bearing Simultaneous Location and Mapping (SLAM) method. In the simulation experiment conducted, the research object determined its position based on bearing and distance to fixed position beacons, which changed their locations in subsequent passages of the vessel. A geometrically optimal configuration of the terrestrial navigation marking system guaranteeing the highest positioning accuracy was identified as a result of the deliberations. The study analysed more than 20,000 cases of different configurations (locations) of the fixed position beacons, demonstrating that the adopted algorithm can be used successfully in the planning of their deployment in the context of ensuring minimum accuracy requirements for the positioning of navigational signs on port approach fairways and under restricted conditions by navigational marking services, as set out in International Maritime Organization (IMO) Resolutions A915 (21) and A953(22).
Enabling unmanned surface vessels to comply with the collisions regulations is one of the most interesting challenges facing the shipping industry. The "Machine Executable Collision Regulations for Marine Autonomous Systems" (MAXCMAS project aims to develop a comprehensive capability and demonstrate satisfactory execution of marine 'rules of the road' by autonomous vessels. This is an Industry-academia Research and Technology (R&T) collaboration with Innovate UK part-funding including a contribution from the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl). The project partners include Rolls-Royce, ATLAS ELEKTRONIC UK Ltd, Lloyd's Register EMEA, Queen's University of Belfast and Warsash Maritime Academy. This paper discusses how the regulations that have been written by humans for human consumption were portrayed to the researchers by the Master Mariner to enable the generation of intelligent MAXCMAS algorithms.
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.
Standards to assess the quality of doctors and clinics performing pre-employment medical examinations (PEMEs) were developed for International Maritime Health Association (IMHA) Quality, a not for profit organisation, created to provide an ethically sound and professional accepted accreditation system that would benefit seafarers having PEMEs and employers, insurers and national maritime authorities seeking valid assessments of seafarers' fitness for duty. These standards followed a format widely used in other healthcare settings, where assessment of clinical performance is desirable.Uptake of these standards by doctors and clinics was not as expected, as they did not see sufficient business benefits coming from accreditation to justify the costs. This was, at least in part, because there was some antagonism to a professionally based accreditation system from commercial interest groups such as insurers, while national maritime authorities did not come forward to use the system as a recommendation or requirement for approval of doctors.The IMHA Quality accreditation system has now been closed and for this reason we are making the standards publicly available. Those who helped to develop them hope that doctors and clinics will now use them as a means of improving the quality of their practice when performing PEME.
