Viewpoint: NAPA Safety Solutions

Reducing rubbish – and workloads

The battle against maritime pollution is fought on multiple fronts, with garbage and ballast water included in the MEPC’s remit. The impact of maritime plastic pollution continues to attract public scrutiny, and MEPC 79 adopted a resolution that means more ships will have to keep logs on what they are throwing away.

The resolution MEPC.360(79) expands the requirement for a garbage record book by lowering the threshold down to ships of 100 gross tonnage and above (from the current threshold 400 gross tonnage and above). This has been done to expand tracking and reporting of accidental discharges to the sea that may involve plastics.

MEPC 79 additionally mandated more detailed and standardised reporting of ballast water operations in the Ballast Water Record Book. As the saying goes, “you can’t manage what you can’t measure”, and this also applies to the management of ballast water, with its risks of spreading invasive species.

As the reporting burden for crews is increasing all the time, the need for streamlined, digital reporting solutions grows. NAPA Logbook is continually evolving to stay ahead of regulation, to ensure that crew can easily manage this environmental reporting by automating log entries and recordkeeping. Moreover, as a digital logbook, it allows teams to use the information they gather to find new insights and efficiencies, rather than leaving valuable data on paper.

Redesigning ships

Like MEPC 78 before it, MEPC 79 participants couldn’t agree on more stringent greenhouse gas targets for shipping, but pressure is mounting for an agreement to be reached at MEPC 80. This will drive the adoption of future fuels further than current CII regulations are likely to, leading to further crucial decisions for the industry.

Innovative ship designs will characterise the next decade and with digital twins, we are able to assess how new systems may affect a ship’s stability and operations, which helps inform decisions on where additional tanks for new fuels or new systems such as batteries should be installed on a ship, for instance.

NAPA’s design and stability tools can calculate the impact of the added weight on the vessel’s stability parameters, including trim, heel and draft. Moreover, the effects on the ship’s vertical centre of gravity can be modelled and checked against data on daily loading conditions provided by NAPA Stability.

Overall, if we’re going to see any major changes to shipping’s green regulatory landscape, it’ll be in summer 2023. But in the meantime, with the implementation of CII, and new data to record and manage, there is plenty for ship owners to do – and no better time to start measuring and optimising all aspects of operations.