Several research and innovation initiatives have been pursued worldwide for the development of autonomous and unmanned ships. However, these ships’ wider adoption is limited by the existing regulatory framework, which presently does not provide clear guidelines and requirements for the design and operation of autonomous ships. The aim of this study is to comprehensively analyse the existing maritime safety and security regulatory framework including the national and international regulations for designing, building, testing and operating the unmanned next-generation inland waterways (IWW) vessel considered in the AUTOSHIP project operating in the Flemish inland waters. This study initiates with the identification of the regulatory bodies controlling the operation and testing of the investigated vessel and then identifies barriers in regulations where amendments or new developments are required. Subsequently, a strategy for overcoming these barriers is proposed. The main regulatory gaps that are identified include the requirements for navigation, emergency and environment protection functions, where new definitions are required for unmanned ship operations (e.g. master, crew, remote control centre). Moreover, some of the regulations explicitly specify the existence of crew on the ships for navigation, emergency and environment protection functions. A three-phase strategy is proposed to overcome the current regulatory barriers.

Effectively addressing safety, security and cyber-security challenges is quintessential for progressing the development of next generation maritime autonomous shipping. This study aims at developing a novel hybrid, semi-structured process for the hazardous scenarios identification and ranking. This method integrates the operational and functional hazard identification approaches, whilst considering the safety, security and cybersecurity hazards. This method is applied to comprehensively assess the safety of an autonomous inland waterways ship at a preliminary design phase. The hazardous scenarios are identified and ranked by a number of experts participating in a series of sessions. The identified hazards risk is estimated considering the frequency and severity indices, whereas their uncertainty is estimated by employing the standard deviations in these two indices among the experts ranking results. Epistemic uncertainty is also considered during ranking. Risk control measures are proposed to de-risk the critical hazards. The results reveal that the most critical hazards from the safety, security and cybersecurity perspectives pertain to the situation awareness, remote control and propulsion functions. Based on the derived results, design enhancements along with high-level testing scenarios for the investigated autonomous ship are also proposed.

Inland shipping has been struggling with a shortage of skippers for several years. This means, among other things, that smaller vessels disappear and the smaller waterways are no longer used. In addition, it is also difficult for inland shipping to compete with road transport. In time, this will cause a reverse modal shift: cargo will be brought back from the waterway to the road. However, the road is already dealing with a lot of congestion while the potential of the waterway is being used less and less. This will lead to major mobility problems.Over the years, an international consensus has grown that the automation of vessels can be a mean to solve a large part of the above problems and to revive transport via the waterways. In this way, the great pressure on our roads will also be reduced.In order to gain a better insight in the possibilities of Smart Shipping, the PIANC WG 210 was established in 2019. The PIANC INCOM WG 210 Report on Smart Shipping on Inland Waterways has been published in March 2022. This report researches the impact of Smart Shipping developments on the physical and digital infrastructure and on traffic management, with focus on inland waterways. Smart shipping developments were viewed from the perspective of infrastructure providers and traffic managers of inland waterways to stimulate and maximize the deployment of Smart Shipping.The report includes an analysis of the current (until 2019) Smart Shipping developments, what is currently lacking to stimulate Smart Shipping developments, as well as recommendations for the future that can be picked up in other PIANC working groups or research groups. This paper will highlight the findings of the WG and will zoom in on some more concrete examples of Smart Shipping in Belgium, where de Vlaamse Waterweg nv is monitoring a test area in which several 100s of test have taken place since 2019. Recent international legal initiatives will also be described.