- Melbourne, Australia
Sabine Knapp
Erasmus University Rotterdam, Econometric Institute, Department Member
- I am a self-motivated, innovative and strategic thinking maritime professional with a unique background spanning acro... moreI am a self-motivated, innovative and strategic thinking maritime professional with a unique background spanning across industry and academia. I have gained my extensive experience with proven track record of achievements at the professional and academic level by working for governments and international organizations at the national (Australian government), supranational (European Union) and international level (United Nations) in Europe, the USA and Australia.edit
- Prof. Philip Hans Franses for my PhD (The Econometrics of Maritime Safety)edit
Research Interests:
To manage and pre-empt incident risks effectively by maritime stakeholders, predicted incident probabilities at ship level have different application aspects such as enhanced targeting for ship inspections, improved domain awareness and... more
To manage and pre-empt incident risks effectively by maritime stakeholders, predicted incident probabilities at ship level have different application aspects such as enhanced targeting for ship inspections, improved domain awareness and improving risk exposure assessments for strategic planning and asset allocations to manage risk exposure. Using a unique and comprehensive global dataset from 2014 to 2020 of 1.2 million observations, this study explores 144 model variants from the field of machine learning (18 random forest variants for 8 incident endpoints of interest) with the aim to enhance prediction capabilities to be used in maritime applications. An additional point of interest is to determine and highlight the relative importance of over 500 evaluated covariates. The results differ for each endpoint of interest and confirm that random forest methods improve prediction capabilities, based on a full year of out of sample evaluation. Targeting the top 10% most risky vessels wou...
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This manuscript uses a global and comprehensive approach based on 1.14 million observations to investigate whether the effect of corruption can be measured towards safety qualities of vessels. Since safety qualities of vessels are... more
This manuscript uses a global and comprehensive approach based on 1.14 million observations to investigate whether the effect of corruption can be measured towards safety qualities of vessels. Since safety qualities of vessels are influenced by many factors and the effect of corruption can be confounded by their interactions, a multi-step approach in used at ship. The findings confirm the hypothesis that port states with higher perceived corruption are less likely to detain vessels and that flag states or ship owners located in countries associated with higher perceived corruption are more likely to have very serious incidents as the operating environment might facilitate substandard shipping and weaker enforcement of international conventions or increased operating costs that can influence safety qualities of vessels in economic hardship. The findings also revealed the degree of underreporting for serious incidents by flag states. The results support the establishment of accountabi...
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The lack of trust in the maritime industry has led to a variety of inspections onboard ships that are performed in the name of safety.This article is based on a combined dataset of port state control inspections and casualties for the... more
The lack of trust in the maritime industry has led to a variety of inspections onboard ships that are performed in the name of safety.This article is based on a combined dataset of port state control inspections and casualties for the time period 1999 to 2004 and identifies areas for improvement of port state control inspections.We use binary logistic regression on a dataset which is constructed of twin ships in order to better filter out effects associated with inspection variables such as deficiencies,time in-between inspections,detention or who inspected the vessel while incorporating a summary of ship’s inspection hi story.The model s suggest that there is some 1ack of fol1ow up on recti f- ying deficiencies that have been found during inspections.In addition, the results identify that the main areas of improvement of inspections are within the ISM code(International Safety Management Code) for tankers and general cargo vessels,ship and cargo operations and machinery and propuls...
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The drifting of mobile offshore drilling units (MODU) due to extreme environmental forcing events, such as due to the passage of a tropical cyclone, have the potential to result in major damage to the environment or infrastructure in the... more
The drifting of mobile offshore drilling units (MODU) due to extreme environmental forcing events, such as due to the passage of a tropical cyclone, have the potential to result in major damage to the environment or infrastructure in the event of a grounding and/or collision. Accurate understanding of these risks is critical to the regulatory approvals and disaster response strategies for offshore oil and gas projects. Drifting vessel trajectories are caused by a combination of wind, surface current and wave - induced drag forces acting on the MOD as well as the restraining drag forces created by the catenary mooring and anchor system attached to the MODU. DHI's drifting vessel model is a Lagrangian agent-based model (ABM) that utilizes a quasi-stationary iterative solution to the force and moment balance relationships at each time step to evaluate the steady vessel drift speed and direction for a given combination of environmental forcings. The model also includes a description...
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Shipping provides essential services even during global pandemics such as SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). The present approach estimates the monetary value at risk (MVR) at the global and regional level for the world fleet and quantifies the... more
Shipping provides essential services even during global pandemics such as SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19). The present approach estimates the monetary value at risk (MVR) at the global and regional level for the world fleet and quantifies the amount of averted incident costs due to inspections. It also provides an indication of the effect of COVID-19 on both. This information can help maritime stakeholders to better understand their risk exposure and improve mitigation strategies. The analysis is based on the global fleet, using a comprehensive combination of data. The analysis confirms the importance to estimate all components at ship level, as safety qualities differ, and each vessel benefits differently from an inspection. Estimates of MVR were slightly higher than global insurance premiums with USD 13.7 to 17.8 billion. Over half of the MVR was due to other marine liabilities and hull and machinery, with cruise vessels leading to loss of life and injuries and oil tankers leading to pollut...
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Recent dynamics in iron ore markets are driven by rapid changes in economic activities that affect commodity markets, trade flows, and shipping activities. Time series models for the relation between these variables in Southeast Asia and... more
Recent dynamics in iron ore markets are driven by rapid changes in economic activities that affect commodity markets, trade flows, and shipping activities. Time series models for the relation between these variables in Southeast Asia and the Australasian region are supplemented with models for safety and pollution risk. Steel production in China, Japan, and South Korea is related to iron ore exports and vessel activity in Australia, with an estimated time lag of about two months. The Purchasing Manager Index, which is popular among traders as indicator of economic activity, is found to have predictive power both for steel production and for iron ore exports. The growth in economic activity and vessel movements is associated with significantly higher risks for ship accidents and pollution.
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Maritime regulators and port authorities require the ability to predict risk exposure for strategic planning aspects to optimize asset allocation, mitigate and prevent incidents. This article builds on previous work to develop the... more
Maritime regulators and port authorities require the ability to predict risk exposure for strategic planning aspects to optimize asset allocation, mitigate and prevent incidents. This article builds on previous work to develop the strategic planning component and introduces the concept of a multilayered risk estimation framework (MLREF) for strategic planning and operations. The framework accounts for most of the risk factors such as ship specific risk, vessel traffic densities and met ocean conditions and allows the integration of the effect of risk control option and a location specific spatial rate ratio to allow for micro level risk assessments. Both, the macro (eg. covering larger geographic areas or EEZ) and micro level application (eg. passage way, particular route of interest) of MLREF was tested via a pilot study for the Australian region using a comprehensive and unique combination of dataset. The underlying routine towards the development of a strategic planning tool was ...
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Due to the shipping industry's international legal framework, there are loopholes in the system, which can increase the risk of incidents with high economic costs due to the substandard operation of vessels. This article... more
Due to the shipping industry's international legal framework, there are loopholes in the system, which can increase the risk of incidents with high economic costs due to the substandard operation of vessels. This article uses duration analysis and through the creation of ship life cycles provides insight into the effectiveness of inspections on prolonging ship lives. The analysis accounts for
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Research Interests: Engineering, Psychology, Australia, Risk, Medicine, and 15 moreUnited States, Vetting, Maritime Safety, Safety Management, Accident analysis and prevention, Risk Reduction, Public health systems and services research, Ships, Cost Saving, Duration Analysis, Cost Savings, Hazard Rate, Proportional Hazards Models, Logistic Models, and High risk
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Maritime regulators, port authorities, and industry require the ability to predict risk exposure of shipping activities at a micro and macro level to optimize asset allocation and to mitigate and prevent incidents. This article introduces... more
Maritime regulators, port authorities, and industry require the ability to predict risk exposure of shipping activities at a micro and macro level to optimize asset allocation and to mitigate and prevent incidents. This article introduces the concept of a strategic planning tool by making use of the multi-layered risk estimation framework (MLREF), which accounts for ship specific risk, vessel traffic densities, and meets ocean conditions at the macro level. This article’s main contribution is to provide a traffic and risk exposure prediction routine that allows the traffic forecast to be distributed across the shipping route network to allow for predicting scenarios at the macro level (e.g., covering larger geographic areas) and micro level (e.g., passage way, particular route of interest). In addition, the micro level is introduced by providing a theoretical idea to integrate location specific spatial rate ratios along with the effect of the risk control option to perform sensitivi...
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Inspection authorities such as the Port State Control Memoranda of Understanding use different policies and targeting methods to select vessels for inspections and rely primarily on past inspection outcomes. One of the main goals of... more
Inspection authorities such as the Port State Control Memoranda of Understanding use different policies and targeting methods to select vessels for inspections and rely primarily on past inspection outcomes. One of the main goals of inspections is to improve the safety quality of vessels and to reduce the probability of future incidents. This study shows there is room for improvement in targeting vessels for inspections and in determining vessel-specific inspection priority areas (e.g., bridge management versus machinery related items). For the year 2018, sixty percent of vessels that experienced very serious or serious (VSS) incidents were not selected for inspection up to three months prior to the incident and forty percent of the vessels that were inspected still had incidents of which only four percent were detained. Furthermore, one can observe a very low correlation (−0.04) between the probabilities of detention and incidents (VSS) for the year 2018. The proposed approach trea...
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This article is based on 183,819 port state control inspections from various port state control regimes and casualties from three different data sources for a time period of 6 years. It is the first time an analysis on a combined dataset... more
This article is based on 183,819 port state control inspections from various port state control regimes and casualties from three different data sources for a time period of 6 years. It is the first time an analysis on a combined dataset of this magnitude has been performed. Binary logistic regression is used to measure the effect of inspections on the
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This report is the second part of a PhD project entitled " The Econometrics of Maritime Safety – Recommendations to Enhance Safety at Sea " which is based on 183,000 port state control inspections 2 and 11,700 casualties from... more
This report is the second part of a PhD project entitled " The Econometrics of Maritime Safety – Recommendations to Enhance Safety at Sea " which is based on 183,000 port state control inspections 2 and 11,700 casualties from various data sources. Its overall objective is to provide recommendations to improve safety at sea. The second part looks into the probability of detention across several port state control regimes while the third part looks at the effect of inspections on casualties as well as the evaluation of target factors. Using binary logistic regression, a method can be established that visualizes the differences of port state control inspections across several regimes. The results indicate that the differences towards the probability of detention are merely reflected by the differences in port states and the treatment of deficiencies and not necessarily by age, size, flag, class or owner. The analysis further shows that there is room for further harmonization ...
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This report presents a comprehensive review of the maritime safety regimes and provides recommendations on how to improve the system. The results show a complex legal framework which generates a high amount of inspections and overlapping... more
This report presents a comprehensive review of the maritime safety regimes and provides recommendations on how to improve the system. The results show a complex legal framework which generates a high amount of inspections and overlapping of inspection areas where no cross-recognition is established by the various stakeholders. While the safety system seems to be successful in eliminating substandard vessels and while average insurance claims costs are substantially lower for inspected vessels than not inspected vessels, the results indicate that the economic conditions of the shipping market also have an effect on safety quality besides the frequency of inspections. No significant differences can be found between industry inspections and port state control inspections with respect to decreasing the probability of casualty. The system could be made more effective by combining data sources on inspections and use them respectively to improve risk profiling and to decrease the frequency...
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This thesis should be seen and understood as a first attempt to study port state control on a global scale by measuring the effect of inspections on the probability of casualties and by identifying areas for improvement. What is new in... more
This thesis should be seen and understood as a first attempt to study port state control on a global scale by measuring the effect of inspections on the probability of casualties and by identifying areas for improvement. What is new in this thesis is the combination of port state control data from various regimes and casualty data from three different sources of the same time frame. The corresponding research questions are 1) What is the present state of the safety regime? 2) Can targeting of ships for inspections be improved? 3) What is the effect of inspections on casualties? and 4) How can inspections be improved? It is based on approx. 183,000 port state control (PSC) inspections and 11,000 casualties from 1999 to 2004. The thesis will hopefully open up a new chapter in research in the area of maritime safety of which the future potential, when political barriers are overcome and more transparency is accepted, should not be ignored by the industry and regulators. Several econome...
This article investigates whether changes in oceanographic conditions can be filtered out to measure their effect of the overall safety level of ships. The article is based on a unique dataset of 3.2 million observations from 20,729... more
This article investigates whether changes in oceanographic conditions can be filtered out to measure their effect of the overall safety level of ships. The article is based on a unique dataset of 3.2 million observations from 20,729 individual vessels for the time period 1979 to 2007 in the North Atlantic and Arctic region. It combines ship particular information, ship safety inspections, casualties, ship economic cycles and oceanographic data. Standard econometric models are used to measure whether the effect of significant wave height and wind strength towards the probability of casualty can be measured and tests whether it changed over the time period on hand since changes in oceanographic conditions have been confirmed in the literature for the North Atlantic. The results show that the effect of wind strength and significant wave height can be measured towards the probability of casualty although there is no clear seasonal pattern while overall; the probability of casualty is in...
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The subject of measuring the performance of registries has been a topic of policy discussions in recent years on the regional level due to the recast of the European Union (EU) port state control (PSC) directive which introduces... more
The subject of measuring the performance of registries has been a topic of policy discussions in recent years on the regional level due to the recast of the European Union (EU) port state control (PSC) directive which introduces incentives for flags which perform better. Since the current method used in the EU region entails some shortcomings, it has therefore been the subject of substantial scrutiny. Furthermore, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) developed a set of performance indicators which however lacks the ability to measure compliance as set out in one of its strategic directions towards fostering global compliance. In this article, we develop and test a methodology to measure flag state performance which can be applied to the regional or global level and to other areas of legislative interest (e.g. recognized organizations, Document of Compliance Companies). Our proposed methodology overcomes some of the shortcomings of the present method and presents a more refi...
Due to the shipping industry's international legal framework and the existence of loopholes in the system, an estimated 5-10 percent of substandard ships exist which are more likely to have incidents with high economic cost. This... more
Due to the shipping industry's international legal framework and the existence of loopholes in the system, an estimated 5-10 percent of substandard ships exist which are more likely to have incidents with high economic cost. This article uses ship life cycles to provide insight into the effectiveness of inspections on prolonging ship lives. We account for fluctuations in the relevant economic environment and the (possible time-varying) ship particulars. We use a unique dataset containing information on the timing of accidents, inspections, ship particular changes of more than fifty thousand ships over a 29 year time period (1978-2007). The results of our duration analysis reveal that the shipping industry is a relative safe industry but there is a possible over-inspection of vessels. It also reveals the need to improve transparency related to class withdrawals and changes of classification of the vessel. Another interesting finding is that for the majority of ship types an incre...
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Shipping activity has increased worldwide, including parts of Australia, and maritime administrations are trying to gain a better understanding of total risk exposure in order to mitigate risk. Total risk exposure integrates risk at the... more
Shipping activity has increased worldwide, including parts of Australia, and maritime administrations are trying to gain a better understanding of total risk exposure in order to mitigate risk. Total risk exposure integrates risk at the individual ship level, risk due to vessel traffic densities, physical environmental criteria, and environmental sensitivities. A comprehensive and robust risk exposure metric can be beneficial to maritime administrations to enhance mitigation of potential harm and reduce vulnerability to the marine environment as well as to safeguard lives and property. This report outlines an integrated methodology to estimate total risk exposure, with specific attention for the ship specific risk for different types of incident. Some related application aspects of the models are discussed.
Recent dynamics in iron ore markets are driven by rapid changes in economic activities that affect commodity markets, trade flows, and shipping activities. Time series models for the relation between these variables in Southeast Asia and... more
Recent dynamics in iron ore markets are driven by rapid changes in economic activities that affect commodity markets, trade flows, and shipping activities. Time series models for the relation between these variables in Southeast Asia and the Australasian region are supplemented with models for safety and pollution risk. Steel production in China, Japan, and South Korea is related to iron ore exports and vessel activity in Australia, with an estimated time lag of about two months. The Purchasing Manager Index, which is popular among traders as indicator of economic activity, is found to have predictive power both for steel production and for iron ore exports. The growth in economic activity and vessel movements is associated with significantly higher risks for ship accidents and pollution.
Research Interests:
Since the early 1990's, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has designated fourteen sea areas as Particular Sensitive Sea Areas (PSSA) that enjoy special protection because of their various important attributes and... more
Since the early 1990's, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has designated fourteen sea areas as Particular Sensitive Sea Areas (PSSA) that enjoy special protection because of their various important attributes and vulnerability to potential harm by increasing shipping activities. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has identified two possible sites for possible designation as PSSA under IMO: the Banc d'Arguin National Park (Mauritania) and the Tubbataha Reef National Park (Philippines). This article presents an integrated framework for the estimation of total risk exposure due to shipping activities and various risk measures for ships trading in the areas of interest. Using a unique and comprehensive combination of data, we test whether ship specific risk increased over time. The results confirm an increase in the considered risk measures of ships trading through or nearby West Africa (Banc d'Arguin) and SouthEast Asia...
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This article is based on a combined dataset of 183,819 port state control (PSC) inspections from various port state control regimes around the world. In theory, there should be no differences in treatments of inspections to determine if a... more
This article is based on a combined dataset of 183,819 port state control (PSC) inspections from various port state control regimes around the world. In theory, there should be no differences in treatments of inspections to determine if a vessel is substandard or not no matter where the inspection was performed. This article uses correspondence analysis in order to investigate
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This article uses correspondence analysis to visualize risk profiles and their changes over the time period 1977 to 2008. It is based on a unique dataset which combines incident data and ship particular data. The risk profiles can help... more
This article uses correspondence analysis to visualize risk profiles and their changes over the time period 1977 to 2008. It is based on a unique dataset which combines incident data and ship particular data. The risk profiles can help stakeholders better understand the relationship of ship particulars, casualty types, incident locations, loss of life and pollution and link the results
ABSTRACT Whereas current risk profiling methods used in the maritime sector largely rely on detention risk, we extend them by considering various risk dimensions and by evaluating a wide range of risk factors including pollution and... more
ABSTRACT Whereas current risk profiling methods used in the maritime sector largely rely on detention risk, we extend them by considering various risk dimensions and by evaluating a wide range of risk factors including pollution and damage costs. Risk factors include ship particulars such as vessel type and the nature of companies and owners, as well as historical information on past accidents, inspections, and changes of particulars. We present methods to summarize and visualize the various risk dimensions paying particular attention to the identification of potentially risky companies. The results are obtained by combining unique data sets with information on ship arrivals, inspections, and accidents covering 2006–2010.
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Safety management and risk profiling to identify substandard ships are of importance to the shipping industry. Whereas current methods rely heavily on detention risk and flag state performance, we extend the risk assessment by considering... more
Safety management and risk profiling to identify substandard ships are of importance to the shipping industry. Whereas current methods rely heavily on detention risk and flag state performance, we extend the risk assessment by considering various risk dimensions and by evaluating a wide range of risk factors. Apart from detention risk, we consider also the risk of various types of
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The lack of trust in the maritime industry between all the industry organizations and regulators has created an inspection industry which is heavily controlled by oil majors in order to limit their liability. This report is an... more
The lack of trust in the maritime industry between all the industry organizations and regulators has created an inspection industry which is heavily controlled by oil majors in order to limit their liability. This report is an introductory part of a PhD project called "The Econometrics of Maritime Safety – Recommendations to Enhance Safety at Sea" which is based on 183,000 port state control inspections1 and 11,700 casualties from various data sources. Its overall objective is to provide recommendations to improve safety at sea. This part identifies all inspections that are performed in the name of safety onboard vessels, their estimated costs and frequencies and brings them in relation with insurance claim costs from P&I Clubs. The probability of casualty is analyzed per frequency of inspection and detention. The results reveal that certain ships are inspected frequently and that over-inspection does not necessarily decrease the probability of having a casualty but can ...
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This article uses visualization techniques to investigate global ship risk profiles and their changes over time. With a unique data set of 49,151 observations, the authors link changes in risk profiles to legislative developments and... more
This article uses visualization techniques to investigate global ship risk profiles and their changes over time. With a unique data set of 49,151 observations, the authors link changes in risk profiles to legislative developments and industry actions, as well as identify areas prone to general safety, loss of life, and pollution risks. Improved risk profiles over time have resulted from
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ABSTRACT Since the early 1990s, the International Maritime Organization has designated 14 Particular Sensitive Sea Areas that enjoy special protection because of their important attributes and vulnerability to potential harm by increasing... more
ABSTRACT Since the early 1990s, the International Maritime Organization has designated 14 Particular Sensitive Sea Areas that enjoy special protection because of their important attributes and vulnerability to potential harm by increasing shipping activities. The UN’s Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization identified two new candidate sites, the Banc d’Arguin national park in West Africa and the Tubbataha Reef national park in South-East Asia. We present various risk measures for ships trading in the areas of interest. Using a combination of data, we find increasing risk of ships trading through West Africa and South-East Asia in general as well as close to both heritage regions, supporting recommendations for increased levels of protection.
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The topic of harmonizing port state control (PSC) inspections has been on the agenda of the flag state sub‐committee meeting at the International Maritime Organization in recent years. This article is based on a unique combined dataset of... more
The topic of harmonizing port state control (PSC) inspections has been on the agenda of the flag state sub‐committee meeting at the International Maritime Organization in recent years. This article is based on a unique combined dataset of 183 819 PSC inspections and uses correspondence analysis to visualize differences in treatment of vessels across several PSC regimes, representing more than 50 individual port states in order to provide better insight into the areas of possible harmonization. The results show that treatment of vessels across the regimes varies, indicating room for harmonization in all inspection areas. We recommend accelerating the harmonization process by putting more emphasis on the harmonization of inspection procedures, combined training of PSC officers and the use of combined datasets across regimes, in particular in the concept of the development of the Global Integrated Ship Information System of the International Maritime Organization.
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This article is based on 183 819 port state control inspections from various port state control regimes for the time frame 1999 to 2004. Using binary logistic regression, we establish the differences of port state control inspections... more
This article is based on 183 819 port state control inspections from various port state control regimes for the time frame 1999 to 2004. Using binary logistic regression, we establish the differences of port state control inspections across several regimes, even though theory predicts there should be no significant differences in treatments of vessels. The results indicate that the differences
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Ship recycling has received considerable attention during the last two decades for a variety of reasons and the industry is currently under a thorough scrutiny with the likelihood of the adoption of a new multilateral convention under the... more
Ship recycling has received considerable attention during the last two decades for a variety of reasons and the industry is currently under a thorough scrutiny with the likelihood of the adoption of a new multilateral convention under the auspices of the International Maritime ...