Continued need for monitoring of ECDIS compliance

FEBRUARY 19, 2018 — Richard Schiferli, Secretary General of the Paris MOU, says that while the overall results of a recent concentrated inspection campaign (CIC) on safety of navigation are encouraging, “continued monitoring of ECDIS compliance will be necessary.”

That may not come as much of a surprise in light of various incidents involving “ECDIS assisted groundings” that have led the U.K. and Danish maritime accident investigation authority to conducting a safety study, designed to more fully understand why operators are not using ECDIS as envisaged by regulators and the system manufacturers (see earlier story).

Port State Control Officers in the Paris MoU and Tokyo MoU regions carried out the joint inspection campaign (CIC) from September 1 to November 30, 2017. The aim was to verify compliance with standards for navigation equipment, including familiarity with the equipment.

A total of 4,027 questionnaires for the CIC were completed during regular port state control inspections. The campaign resulted in 47 detentions (1.2%) directly linked to the related safety of navigation requirements.

Positive results were recorded on the familiarity with the procedure of emergency operation of steering gear (99.4%), the transmitting of the correct particulars of AIS (99.3%) and the recognition of stages of remote audible alarm of BNWAS (98.6%).

Least compliant were recordings on appropriate up to date electronic charts and back up arrangements (96.2%) and complete passage plan for the voyage berth to berth(96.3%).

The majority of the 4,027 inspections performed during the CIC were on general cargo/multi-purpose ships, with1,155 (29%) inspections and bulk carriers with 883 (22%) inspections.

Ships flying the flags of Panama (13%), Malta (9%) and Marshall Islands (9%) were inspected most frequently.

The results of the campaign will be further analyzed and findings will be presented to the Port State Control Committee.

The final CIC report will be published on the Paris MoU website (http://www.parismou.org/)