Making Decisions About Safety in US Ports and Waterways

Methodology to Assess Ports and Waterways on Safety and Capacity

Xavier Bellsolà Olba is a PhD Candidate at the Delft University of Technology since January 2014. Prior to his current position, he obtained a 5-year Bachelor and MSc equivalent degree in Civil Engineering (2011) at the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), in Barcelona, Spain. As part of his studies he participated in an international semester exchange program at the Chalmers University o...

Design Criteria, Applicability and Specifications of Visual Aids to Navigation Signs Used in Ports and Waterways (Case Study of Siraf Pars Service Port and Lavan Oil Terminal)

Due to the range of hazards threatening the navigation of vessels such as collisions with other passing vessels, collisions with structures such as breakwaters, and collisions with the bottom of vessels with the seabed, the design and use of fixed and floating signs should be considered. These signs, in addition to daytime operation, should also be equipped with portable lights to navigate duri...

Decisions of Value: Going Backstage; Comment on “Contextual Factors Influencing Cost and Quality Decisions in Health and Care: A Structured Evidence Review and Narrative Synthesis”

This commentary expands on two of the key themes briefly raised in the paper involving analysis of the evidence about key contextual influences on decisions of value. The first theme focuses on the need to explore in more detail what is called backstage decision-making looking at how actual decisions are made drawing on evidence from ethnographies about decision-making. These studies point to l...

Development of a Decision Support Tool for Assessing Vessel Traffic Management Requirements for U.S. Ports

Effective vessel traffic management is critical to the safety of maritime ports and waterways. The United States and other maritime nations have had difficulty in establishing justifiable criteria for selecting ports requiring vessel traffic systems and for determining the level of sophistication of the vessel traffic management system required. Congress directed the USCG to reexamine the Vesse...

A multi-agent system for tracking the intent of surface contacts in ports and waterways