According to new IMO regulation on cyber security, Lloyd’s Register approach, American Bureau Ship regulation, the guidelines edited by BIMCO, CLIA, ICS, INTERCARGO and INTERTANKO and DNV-GL-RP-0496, it has become necessary that academia, Maritime Universities should adopt quick solutions in developing lectures notes in Maritime Cyber Security in order to prepare the academia teachers in cyber security on ships and also for training future students according to the new realities in the Maritime Transport industry and its new risks. At Constanta Maritime University (CMU) we have decided to become more involved in shaping new skills and capabilities for our students and industry partners. Therefore, maritime in September 2017 we will be launching the new CMU Research Center in Maritime Cyber Security at the Black Sea coast.

Ship maintenance is regulated by both the state and the classification society. The scope of maintenance works depends on the age of the ship and includes a dock, intermediate and special inspection. The problem is to estimate the reliable time of the ship maintenance and the downtime at the shipyard. The purpose of this article is to develop a more accurate model to predict a ship’s overall maintenance time. A multiple linear regression model is developed to describe the impact of historical data on hull repair, painting time, piping, age, structural and hull plate replacement for ship maintenance. In the literature, the least squares method is used to estimate unknown regression coefficients. The original value of the article is the use of a genetic algorithm to estimate coefficient values of the multiple linear regression model. Necessary analysis and simulations are performed on the data collected for oil and chemical or product tankers. As a result, a significant improvement in the adequacy of the presented model was identified.

Nowadays, there are threats everywhere around us, on land, in the air and at sea. The most important and dangerous ones at the same time are the threats with impact on security and safety. At sea, more than in other fields, these threats are very different, starting with piracy, armed robbery and taking hostages up to different forms of terrorist or cybercrime acts. Piracy and other violent activities appear specifically in particular geographical areas, mostly based on different conflicts inside seaside countries. For the other threats considered, such as different types of terrorist activities, there are not geographical areas of interest defined. They can appear all over the world. The terrorist acts in the maritime field are not necessarily to be treated as a direct action, background systems may also be used, like information or operative computer control systems, which have a great importance and impact on the proper functionality of the maritime systems. Nowadays, there are some serious cybersecurity incidents with major impact on a worldwide scale. In the last decade there was a limited approach to address such major issues, most of them based on several methods, which had a centralized point of failure: the lack of knowledge and adaptability versus new ways of system penetration. For the technical vulnerabilities there are different solutions already developed, or being developed, for data protection and information security. Despite some important developments on data security, many of the important sectors remain under high risk regarding cybersecurity. The maritime sector today is considered one of the most exposed sectors to cyber threats, due to the global nature of the business as well as a great economical, geopolitical and environmental influence. Here, the higher vulnerability remains the human element, as an operative part of the data systems. Humans will always be a source for mistakes and errors. “To err is human” can be successfully applied in many activity fields, included the maritime one. The main purpose of any study on these matters, human factor and cyber protection is to start from the unpredictability of the human behaviour. It would be almost impossible to provide a totally secure information system, as long as such a system is exposed to the human factor. This paper intends to analyse possible models of human behaviour with impact on data systems’ protection in the maritime field and how systems can be improved and highly secured for any vulnerabilities based on these models.

In the last years cyber security has become a relevant issue for the maritime industry. The increasing digitalization in the maritime sector enables the remote communication between the ships and the headquarter company by means of information technology systems, and most of the operational technology (OT) equipment on board ships exchanges online communications data with the shore for monitoring the main functions of the ship. Failure the vessel operational technology (OT) equipment on board ship, like the ECDIS map for navigation, the steering systems and the main engine controls, has serious consequences. In this article we discussed the vulnerability of different OT equipments on board ship, and we highlighted how the hacker can inject some malware that affects the hull stress monitoring systems (HSMS), or can easy manipulate the EDI messaging text of the load plan (there is still a significant lack of security in the validation of message integrity) that finally leads to detrimental effects on the the ship's stability.

This chapter presents concepts of drought and flood management, information on the steps taken and on the national policies applied in Romania in this field. The Romanian institutional framework for the management of droughts and floods is detailed, as well as the planning phase, the plans, the strategies and the programs that establish Romania's national priorities on climate change and the management of droughts and floods, in line with the EU directives and international conventions and treaties Romania is part of. Information is also given about preventive, operative measures of intervention and rehabilitation, as part of the operational and emergency situations response management, as well as the guidelines, trends and future actions of prevention and control for this category of disasters in Romania.