The influence of hydro-meteorological factors on the risk of harbour operations

The paper presents a study on the environmental impact on the risk of harbour operations. The hydro-meteorological elements have been recognised as the most important safety factors with regard to the ship entrance into the harbour and berthing inside the docks. They are identified as real time, short and long term factors and they all should be considered in the safety assessment of harbour operations. The risk of each operation should be determined on the basis of weather forecast and the modelled prediction of the total water level, surface currents and waves. Several topics have been discussed in the paper with regard to the safe ship approach and navigation inside the harbour. The application of different tools for the prediction of ship performance is presented. The stochastic method for the determination of probability that the ship will navigate within the boundaries of the required navigational width and low speed manoeuvring standards proposed by Panel H-10 SNAME have been considered. The real scale experiments carried out in Port of Gdynia and the several trials performed using the Full Mission Simulator convinced that the open water model tests are necessary for the proper prediction of ship performance during berthing. The program of the proposed open water investigations is presented in the paper. The experimental stand constructed for the tests of ship-berth interactions, in the lake Silm at the Ilawa Ship Handling Training and Research Centre facilities is described.