Improving Occupational Safety Onboard Turkish Flagged Ships by Benefiting From Smart Technologies

Introduction

Shipping is vital to the world economy and trade. Because the inter-continental trade of energy, food, raw materials or goods would not be possible without shipping. The annual income of global shipping is approximately 500 billion US Dollars within the world economy (ICS, 2020). Today, 80-90% of the world trade is carried out by the merchant ships. According to “2020 Maritime Sector Report” of the İMEAK DTO (2020), 83% (12,2 billion tones) of the total world trade (14,7 billion tones) was carried out by the merchant ships in 2019. As of 2020, the world maritime merchant fleet consists of 55,655 ships (more than 300 Gross Tonnage (GT), with a total capacity of 1,97 billion Deadweight Tonnage (DWT). Similarly, 88.6% of the Turkish foreign trade was carried out by the merchant ships in 2019. Turkey’s merchant fleet consists of 1,484 ships (more than 1,000 GT), with a total capacity of 29,3 million DWT. Therefore, the merchant ships trading internationally and seafarers working on these ships are very important elements for the sustainability of global logistics, transportation and supply chain. Shipping is also considered as a cost-effective and safe form of transportation; however, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO), International Maritime Organization (IMO) and World Health Organization (WHO), it is also a very dangerous activity such that dangerous ship and cargo operations as well as long voyages, extreme weather conditions, illnesses and accidents can seriously damage the health of seafarers (ILO, 2008). The top three sectors that seem to concentrate more fatal work accidents are manufacturing, construction, and transportation and storage (ILO, 2020a). For example; according to the Statistical Office of the European Union (EUROSTAT, 2018), 20.5% of 3,332 fatal work accidents across the EU-27 in 2018 occurred in construction, followed by transportation and storage with 16.7%. Ships are technically sophisticated and high value assets and so, the building cost of a larger hi-tech ship can be over 200 million US Dollars (ICS, 2020). Accordingly, damage or total loss of a merchant ship because of any marine casualties such as collision, capsizing, grounding, contact, fire/explosion means an economic damage as well. The marine casualties sometimes might cause not only economic damage but also very serious marine environment pollutions which would adversely affect the marine eco-system. On the other hand, according to “BIMCO/ICS Seafarer Workforce Report” of July 2021, it is estimated that 1,89 million seafarers currently serve the world merchant fleet (ICS, 2021). It was 1,187 million in 2005 (ICS, 2015). This means that the number of seafarers globally over the world has been increased 59% between 2005-2021. These seafarers sometimes expose to the various shipboard occupational accidents resulting in injuries or deaths. These occupational accidents also generate external social security loads to the economy. It is a fact that the shipboard occupational accidents may sometimes occur onboard the Turkish flagged ships like other ships of the world shipping fleet. On the other hand, it is a phenomenon that various smart technologies, some of which can also be benefited for improving the occupational health and safety (OHS), have been developed in the last years in line with the Industry 4.0 developments. This chapter presents a discussion on how smart technologies can be benefited for improving the occupational safety onboard ships, particularly onboard the Turkish flagged ships, and also presents some recommendations of the Authors on this topic.