A simpler approach

Commercial shipping is heavily regulated by a large number of international, EU and national authorities. The sheer number of organisations involved, the lack of consistent definitions and the vast number of different ship types in use, pose a significant challenge to those who need to create, enforce and comply with maritime regulations. This high level of complexity often leaves practitioners uncertain as to which regulations apply in a given scenario and makes non-compliance a very real threat.

Philipp Lohrmann, Research Scientist at BMT Group and Project Manager of e-Compliance, a new three year EU project, highlights the current challenges and provides a comprehensive view of what is required to help reduce the administrative burden for stakeholders. Philipp further explains why creating a model for managing regulations digitally may revolutionise the currently fragmented field of regulatory compliance.

A modern ship bridge is packed with bleeping, blinking state-of-the-art technology to help steer her clear of danger, but there is little more to help avoid treacherous legal issues than there was a century ago. What they have is little more than a legal plumb line, chronometer and sextant.

Relying on such antiquated legal tools means merchant vessels are forever at the mercy of ever-changing regulations, often murky, and potentially costly or even ruinous. Regulations change from one vessel to another, from place to place and, sometimes even from one day to the next. Regulations applying to a particular vessel generally depend on the date a ship was built, not the date shown on the calendar. Any oversight or error could lead to costly delays or even detentions. It is no great surprise then that senior seafarers continue to highlight that compliance paperwork can take up as much as 80 per cent of their time – time which could be spent dealing with more ”worldly” matters like safety and navigation.

Seafarers attempting to comply with regulations face many challenges. The language used to express bye-laws applying at a particular port is often unfamiliar to those expected to obey them, usually being written in the local language of the port in question, rather than the mother tongue of the port’s visitors or plain English. Moreover, even in the local language, terms appearing in one document might be used to mean something different in another. What constitutes a “bulk carrier”, for example, is a slippery nautical term in English. Such inherent legal ambiguities mean that ship owners inevitably face some degree of compliance risk whatever steps they take to avoid it.

Of course, none of this is new, but centuries of linguistic and legal head-scratching, form-filling, signing, stamping and countersigning has led to a number of new approaches – one of which is e-Compliance, a new three year European Commission-funded research project which will help to improve efficiency within the maritime regulations domain. But it is not just administratively overburdened ship masters and ship agents who stand to reap the reward in freeing up spare time. The e-Compliance project is set to pave the way for a number of approaches which address specific issues, from which all stakeholders in maritime law can benefit, whether their responsibility is to create, enforce or obey it.

Navigating the fog
The project, involving ten organisations from seven EU countries, is being coordinated by BMT Group Ltd, a leading international design, engineering and risk management consultancy. It will include the development of a system which provides a digital library of maritime regulations, enhanced to allow users to more easily establish definitions and their meaning.

Using the e-Compliance system, a supranational organisation would be able to ensure consistency when drafting new maritime regulations. Currently, the same term can often refer to various things in different regulatory regimes. Using the e-Compliance system, it will be possible to ensure the same term can be used to denote the same thing in new regulatory documents. A user affected by the new regulation, meanwhile, such as a ship operator or port, would be able to look up the definitions of a term and search for related regulations referring to the same term or its synonyms.

Those drawing up local port bye-laws might also look to compare their efforts to international regulations, something which is currently difficult to do. Again, the same term is often used to denote different things while different terms are used to denote the same thing. It is hard to find overlaps and gaps in the maze of existing regulations. At the heart of this approach lies the concept of an ontology which is a structured, and to some extent, computer-readable model of the maritime regulations domain. A consistent use of terms and definitions is then enforced by mapping new draft regulations to this structure.

The e-Compliance system will also enable a port to publish regulations and report templates in a machine-readable format. Such documents could be picked up by the e-Compliance system and specifically tailored to the needs of a ship, automatically initiating the reporting and compliance-checking process when required. This would in some cases be straightforward, for instance, when it comes to extracting a ship’s “static” data, such as its identity number, name, and tonnage.

Connecting the makers of the law to those who need to enforce or obey it through an electronic system would mean those required to uphold a regulation need to know of any changes. The same goes for International Safety Management code companies. Providing updates on regulation changes which are filtered by relevance (for example, ship or cargo types and geographic regions) will help practitioners update their processes and internal procedures to ensure compliance.

Port inspectors would also see benefits. Certificates could be issued with scannable “QR” mobile device codes. Using such codes, a paper certificate’s validity could be readily checked using a handheld device (like a smartphone) which deciphers the QR code and allows the user to compare the stored details to the information on the certificate. Such a “digital signature” will simplify and speed up the validation process for on board certificates.

Local bye-laws and all mandatory reporting requirements vary widely. The e-Compliance system will allow ship agents to formulate computer-readable “rules” that contain the requirements of the bye-laws. These rules can then be exported to the ship’s “Rules Engine” which can alert the captain and crew if any of the requirements are not met.

Another approach is to utilise ‘historical’ data on vessel movements and actions in a certain area (like a port). If a vessel then approaches this port, its behaviour can be compared to the ‘typical’ behaviour of similar vessels on similar journeys. Any discrepancies could be detected, warning the crew of possible instances of non-compliance. In addition, the e-Compliance system can further reduce paperwork by sharing reporting information when ports require it to be transferred in advance from the port the vessel last left.

Making the law
Those drafting regulations also have much to gain. As aforementioned, regulations can be created by numerous different bodies with little co-operation. By offering a way to create regulations digitally e-Compliance could allow them to harmonise their efforts. This could improve the quality of regulations and, in time, reduce the burden put on those having to enforce and comply with them.

As things stand, a captain may be a faultless seafarer who is able to navigate the most challenging of routes in seemingly impossible conditions, only to dock in a small European port and be confounded by paperwork. Such ports would benefit from having the tools they need to make their facility more welcoming to trade.

Any efficiency improvements the project can deliver would also offer benefits for the EU economy as a whole, where ships transport 90 per cent of external trade and 40 per cent of internal trade. More broadly, the project fits into the EU’s “Integrated Maritime Policy” which aims to help meet the rising demands of global competitiveness, climate change, the degradation of the marine environment, safety, security and sustainability.

To fulfil the EU’s aim of continuing to be a world economic power by offering an open single market for trade, seafarers need technology to help them reliably navigate legal obstacles, just as they have to overcome physical ones. The e-Compliance project could show the way.

e-Compliance consists of 10 partners, all of which bring their own areas of knowledge and experience of working in the maritime space. They include: BMT Group Ltd, Det Norske Veritas (DNV), Danaos Shipping Co Ltd, INLECOM Systems, The Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research (TNO), TEMIS, Acciona Infraestructuras, PORTIC Barcelona, Norsk Marinteknisk Forskningsinstitutt AS (MARINTEK) and the Maritime Administration of Latvia.

Article by Mr. Philipp Lohrmann, Project Manager of e-Compliance, as arranged on behalf of Hellenic Shipping News Worldwide