Preliminary Results of a System-theoretic Assessment of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships’ Safety

Abstract

While a system-theoretic approach to the safety analysis of innovative socio-technical systems gains a growing acceptance among academia, safety issues of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) remain largely unexplored. Therefore, we applied a System-Theoretic Process Analysis to develop and analyze a preliminary model of the unmanned shipping system in order to elaborate safety recommendations for future developers of the actual system. Results indicate that certain advancements shall be undertaken in relation to MASS’ software solutions in particular.

Keywords

• maritime autonomous surface ships (mass)
• autonomous ship
• munin project
• advanced autonomous waterborne application (aawa)
• system-theoretic process analysis (stpa)
• system-theoretic accident model and process (stamp)
• unmanned shipping system
• safety at sea