Dear Readers, I am very pleased to introduce the new 53(125) issue of the Scientific Journals of the Maritime University of Szczecin. Another year of activity on the publishing market is behind us. In 2017, the Scientific Journals of the Maritime University of Szczecin published as many as 61 scientific papers: 15 in issue 49(121), 13 in issue 50(122), 14 in issue 51(123) and 19 in issue 52(124). The scientific articles published in 2017 were prepared by 105 authors (in total, without repetitions). The percentage of Polish researchers in this group was 77.1% out of 61 publications. Internationally, the greatest contribution was from academics affiliated to Croatian institutes – 6 authors (5.7% of the total number of authors) and Iranian institutes – 7 authors (6.6% of the total number of authors), followed by Germany – 4 authors, Australia – 3 authors, Sweden – 2 authors and Finland and the Netherlands – 1 author each. The current issue of the journal includes recent findings on shipbuilding, water transport, navigation and marine traffic engineering. The introductory paper for this issue entitled “Predicting the shipping market by spreads of timecharter rates” has been prepared by Prof. Tsz Leung Yip – Deputy Director at the C.Y. Tung International Centre for Maritime Studies, lecturer at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University and a world-class specialist in logistics and marine transport. This article explores the predictability of spreads between long-term and short-term timecharter rates on spot freight rates. This publication has been financed by the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Poland from the funds devoted to science-popularising activity: grant No. 790/P-DUN/2016. I hope that this material will prove informative to all readers interested in the issues of marine transport. The Marine Technology and Innovation section includes papers on remote and unmanned navigation of vessels, equipment facilitating SAR actions as well as using state-of-the-art models in reliability analysis and ship design. The section devoted to Navigation and Maritime Transport includes articles on exploitation aspects of using magnetic compasses, ship steering Nomoto model and ship traffic models application. The Transport Engineering section is devoted to inland transportation and marine traffic engineering. Moreover, it discusses the quantitative analysis of the impact of fishing ships’ traffic streams on traffic streams of merchant vessels in the Polish maritime areas. The section entitled Miscellaneous includes articles investigating the analysis of parameters influencing the suitability of the surface unit for search and rescue operation at sea as well as impact of Liquefied Natural Gas terminal on gas distribution and bunkering network in Poland. I would like to take this opportunity to encourage authors from all over the world to publish their research in the Scientific Journals of the Maritime University of Szczecin. All readers are invited to visit our website, which now has a more intuitive layout. Under the http://scientific-journals.eu/ address it is possible to access the online version of the current issue as well as archival ones.

This paper has explored the predictability of spreads between long-term and short-term timecharter rates on spot freight rates. The spread between long-term and short-term rates (or the slope of the yield curve) is often used as a leading economic indicator of economic activities. This concept has been extended to the shipping market in this paper and the probability that the spot freight rate will increase or decrease has been determined. Using the spread between the timecharter rates on long-term and short-term charter contracts, the direction of spot freight rates has been predicted with the dynamic probit model, which is used to estimate the probability of discrete events. Evidence has been drawn from Panamax dry bulk ships for future weekly, quarterly and biyearly changes of spot freight rates. While the dynamic probit model has shown moderate predictive power, the weekly model has shown that the market has a relatively longer memory than the quarterly and biyearly models.

In the present study, the reliability evaluation application during design, maintenance and repair phases have been investigated for the girder of a ship’s hull. The objective of the project was to develop reliability-based methods which are to be used for the design of ship structures, in particular by the calibration of the safety factors in the design rules. In order to evaluate the structural strength, the extended model of the ultimate limit state of the hull-girder, regarding corrosion and fatigue defects, has been used based using a time-dependent probabilistic analysis. Time-dependent reliability has been evaluated using the required minimum elastic section modulus; in the case of fatigue in a ship’s deck this process has been done using mechanical fracture and the S-N curve. The results from the reliability evaluation using the Monte-Carlo simulation method and First-order reliability methods (FORM), indicated that these two methods agreed well. Analysis of the corrosion defect reliability showed a decrease of the structure’s reliability during its lifetime; hence it is possible to use the reliability criteria in the design phase in order to achieve a better perception of the structure’s operation during its lifetime with regard to environmental conditions. A comparison between the fatigue analysis results showed that the fracture mechanics method gave more conservative results compared to the S-N curve method, because of the way it considers early crack size.

that is fast approaching. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is the result of an enormous increase in information being acquired, stored, processed, and transmitted The effect of this has been smart domestic appliances, robots, telephones, production machines, and other objects, visible everywhere in everyday life. There are obviously many advantages to the introduction of smart vehicles and attempts to introduce smart cars into traffic are already in progress. Smart ships are also currently attracting much attention. RINA organized three international conferences on this subject in a short space of time. An attempt to send a fully autonomous experimental ship across the Atlantic is already in progress. Although technically it would be possible to already build smart ships, there are many practical problems to be solved before they could be put into operation. Apart from purely technical problems there are problems of the economy, safety, security, and environmental protection as well as legal and political problems. There are also important problems regarding employment, training, and human relations. Questions are now being asked as to whether smart ships would be fully autonomous, remote controlled, or manned with a skeleton crew, and who will ultimately be responsible for the ship in question and how smart ships will affect sea traffic. Some of these problems have been discussed in this paper.

This paper presents the basic principles of SAR (Search and Rescue) and CSAR (Combat Search and Rescue) missions, with the SAR support systems installed on-board Polish and German military helicopters presented in more detail. Mi8/17 and W3PL “Głuszec” helicopters with an integrated avionics system (designed and constructed in the Air Force Institute of Technology) used in combination with an on-board weaponry system are designed to undertake CSAR missions. A TOPLITE observation-targeting head (with TV and FLIR thermal cameras, for day and night operation respectively) and a RSC125G on-board radio direction finder were used to search for survivors. The weaponry system of the W3PL “Głuszec” helicopter is involved in supporting CSAR search-rescue tasks, e.g. functions of targeting with the use of a Head-Up Display (HUD) (through the integrated ballistic computer) and imaging with the use of a TOPLITE head monitor.

The following paper presents a novel method for approximating the fall trajectories of small, lightweight oil binders, used during oil spill clean-up operation at sea. Due to the weight, size and shape of the binders, the fall trajectory is highly dependent on the direction and strength of the wind, as well as the rotations and positions of individual binders when dropped. Since a large quantity of tightly packed binders are dropped at once, it is highly inconvenient to calculate the precise trajectory of each binder when its exact initial rotation and position inside the container are not known. The aim of this study is to predict the exact moment and position of the drop, as well as the oil binders’ spread, considering wind conditions, airplane velocity and height.

Hydrodynamic shape optimization plays an increasingly important role in the shipping industry. To optimize ship hull and propeller shapes for minimum total (friction+wave) calm-water resistance and maximum open water efficiency, respectively, the main particulars of a hull and propeller model are considered as design variables. The optimization problem is performed by using an integrated hull-propeller system optimization problem (HPSOP) code in a multi-level and multi-point methodology in early-stage ship design. Three numerical methods with variable fidelity are employed to carry out the hydrodynamic performance analysis of a ship’s hull and propeller. A ship and its propeller are selected as initial models to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed optimization procedure. The numerical results show that the developed technique is efficient and robust for hydrodynamic design problems.

In this paper a simple four-point, in terms of time, but eight-value in total, identification method has been developed for the second-order linear Nomoto steering model. The algorithm intrinsically uses the zigzag test data in that it inherited some principles of the well-known procedure for the first-order model, from which it is essentially derived. The performance evaluation was then conducted with both simulated and real data. However, the results of these early, unprecedented efforts are far from satisfactory. Some potential sources of difficulties have been discussed. This calls for further research and improvement in order to provide a practical application of the method.

At present, providing a clear presentation of the navigational situation around a navigator’s own ship (OS) is one of the most important issues facing device manufacturers. Integration of navigational devices on the bridge has made it possible to transfer information and present it in the form chosen by the navigator screen. However, this may cause a decrease in the clarity of information and hamper its interpretation. The ability to select the best information, and that which is most needed at a given moment, depends on navigator proficiency. Vectors are still the basic form of the graphic presentation of radar-tracked object data. However, the ability to track more objects at the same time in crowded areas results in a decrease in readability and can cause errors. This article introduces the possibility of presenting information about collision danger in the form of Dangerous Courses Sectors (DCS) together with an analysis of changes in these during typical ship encounter situations. DCS are calculated on the base of Dangerous Passing Areas (DPA) as bearings on the marginal points of these areas.

This article has looked into the role of the magnetic compass in providing navigational safety for ships. The existing requirements of the magnetic compass for safe navigation in case the gyro compass breaks-down and in case of terrorists abusing GPS signals do not solve the problems that occur in everyday life. Therefore, a new rational requirement has been proposed for the accuracy and frequency of deviation adjustment work assuring the safety and cost effectiveness of navigation. Vessel owners and masters have responsibilities to ensure that magnetic compasses are maintained in good working order, are adjusted and accompanied by a table or curve of residual deviations. This article has outlined the most urgent problems for the adjustment of magnetic compasses that apply to all ships irrespective of size and navigation area. The proposed method has been verified experimentally.

This paper presents the method used for the creation of ship traffic models in Southern Baltic Traffic Separation Schemes (TSS). The analysis of ship traffic was performed by means of statistical methods with the use of historical AIS data. The paper presents probabilistic models of ship traffic’s spatial distribution and its parameters. The results showed that there is a correlation between the standard deviation of traffic flow and TSS lane width that can be used in practical applications to ensure the safety of navigation; improve navigation efficiency, safety and risk analysis in given area, and for the creation of a general model of ship traffic flow.

The Baltic Sea is crisscrossed by several dense vessel traffic routes. Growing shipping traffic increases the likelihood of collisions. A quantitative analysis of the impact of fishing vessel traffic streams on streams of merchant vessel traffic aims to identify areas of intense traffic of this type and to assess the potential risks. The identification of intersections of fishing vessel routes and merchant shipping traffic allows us to identify spots of potential collisions. The analysis made use of the IALA IWRAP Mk2 program and AIS data collected from April 1, 2013 to March 31, 2014.

A process is an ordered set of related activities taking place in a given time. Processes are present in all branches of the economy, engineering, science, etc. Due to the huge amount of data produced the rapid development of data mining techniques has been observed. Similar methods are also used in the context of processes and are called process mining. The main task of process mining is to create a process model, which is used to reason about the process and to make decisions inside it. The process model may be used to discuss responsibilities, simulations, predictions, etc. The main data structures in process mining are event logs. It is always very important to have correct data which makes creating a reliable process model possible. In this paper the basic guidelines for recording such event logs have been described and conclusions were drawn. The main focus of this research was transport problems.

This paper presents an original kinematic method for the assessment of the safe parameters of waterway bends. The proposed method has been based on the analysis of the results obtained through the use of the developed simulation model which allowed for the examination of all the physically available paths of a ship’s centre of gravity. The results of the simulation were divided into defined subsets that enabled the assessment of the safe parameters of waterway bends. This paper also presents the calculations that were carried out for the theoretical reference bend.

The presented method for defining the conditions of safe operation of marine ferries in ferry terminals allows verification of shipowner ferry designs. In the first stage of this method, simulations are used to determine the allowable wind speed. The second stage comprises simulations of ferry berthing aimed at defining safe manoeuvring areas, the energy of berthing impact and propeller stream speeds at allowable wind speeds. The method was used in the design of a 228 m long hybrid ferry.