International Maritime Organisation

Trans fashionation of goods all over the human race can be done by four modes which be railway, road, air and sea. Sea transportation is the one of the antiquatedest transportation mode for some(prenominal) centuries. The publication of ships and types increased quickly in the last two centuries. For instance, the fall of passenger fleets was 106 in 1972 merely it is reached to 226 in 1998 (Alderton, 2004). This growth leads sea relations busy with sundry(a) types of ships carrying million tons of cargoes and passengers. As a bulge outgrowth of this, unexpected accidents started to come out with fatal casualties.Some preventive regulations must(prenominal) be taken both onshore or offshore to evince the responsibilities and gum elastic measures for the marine industry. Regarding to this, countries unavoidablenessed to establish an organization to promote nautical safety. IMO is the first international maritime organization and was established in 1948 (IMO, 20/10/20 05). It was first entered into gist in 1958 and its choose is to ensure safety, to principal(prenominal)tain human injury or loss of life and to avoid disablement to the environment (IMO, 1992). This essay go out explore the IMO conventions and the efficientness of IMO to the marine industry.IMO is have-to doe with with the three important points safety, prevention and control. In order to be effective in these atomic number 18as, rules and regulations must be applied within the conventions. IMO has adopted various conventions and most significant are SOLAS (Safety of Life at Sea), philosophy (International Safety Management), COLREG (Convention on the International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea), MARPOL (International Convention for the Prevention of defilement from Ships), STCW (International Convention on Standards of Training, Certification and Watchkeeping for Seafarers) and ILLC (International Convention on Load Lines). Adoptions of these conventions emergency to follow some procedures and long time to become valid. Six main(prenominal) bodies are voluminous within IMO to design, decide and offer the conventions and followed by a political relation acceptance to purge into force. In addition to this, due to the rapid changes in shipping industry, conventions must be keeping updated to satisfy the conditions.SOLAS the main objective of the SOLAS Convention is to specify minimum standards for the construction, equipment and operation of ships (SOLAS, 2001). It was adopted in 1974 and was entered into force in 1980. It was divided into 12 chapters, all requirements and certificates are controlled by the flag commonwealths. It is high-pitchedly focused on* construction stability, subdivision, fire security measure and detection of vessels* life-saving appliances and arrangements lifeboats and liferats* radiotelegraphy and radiotelephony* safety of navigation radars, navigational aids, routeing of ships* safety management of ships operations which is ISM Code* Carriage of goods.ISM scratchIt is known as the one of the most significant IMO invention which is a management system that controls work processes from the top direct to lower, to stimulate safety organization both ashore and onboard. It is applied with property management techniques to order the responsibilities and principles of each action. System must provide safe working environment, to outperform against identified risks and sustained improvement of management and personal skills ashore and alongside (ISM, 2002). pulp 1.1 The safety management model (Bromby, 1995)As shown in conformation 1.1 management systems have some steps to be reviewed regularly in order to know that the system is working effectively.COLREG It was adopted in 1972 and entered into force in 1977. COLREG determines vessels speed, risks and conducts of vessels operating in or near traffic separation schemes. The vessels which are navigating on the high seas or goi ng to connect to the high seas must obey these rules. The other important areas of COLREG are visibility of vessels, lights and shapes, snuff it and lights.STCW It was adopted in 1977 and entered into force in 1984. Examination of the past accidents reports state that the majority of the accidents are caused by tickerkeeping officers. This convention is concerned with the basic requirements on training, certification and watchkeeping. It is divided into six chapters which are general provisions, navigational watch keeping, keeping an engineering watch, radio department, special requirements for army tankers and proficiency in excerption craft (IMO,20/10/2005).ILLC It was adopted in 1966 and entered into force in 1968. Its aim is to reserve buoyancy, freeboard stability and avoid excess stress on the ships remove (IMO, 20/10/2005).MARPOL There was a tremendous increase in tanker production after Second World War II. These tankers were rattling complex to built and operate. Acco rding to this, some accidents occurred with thousands tons of anele discover into water and damaged marine environment. MARPOL was established to prevent the marine defilement from oil color splits, sewages, chemicals and other dangerous products. It introduces some measures, for instance* Segregated barretter tanks are only used for ballast as cargo oil is prohibited to overthrow find faulting problem, tank size limitationation to limit potential oil outflow (Kristiansen, 2005).As mentioned before, all conventions aims are to reduce risks in marine industry. How the marine industry was before and how is it now? In order to find out the effectiveness of IMO conventions, comparison must be done mingled with the past data and current data. The muzzy of ships are illustrated by pulp 1.2 between 1950 and 2000.Figure 1.2 Annual percentage of ships lost creative activitywide (Kristiansen, 2005).According to the Figure 1.2, it is clear that thither is a stabbing decrease in los s percentage that the ratio is reduced from 3% to 0.3% in fifty years. This is directly proportional to the growth in the number of safety regulations that have taken sic between the years 1800 and 2000. Figure 1.3 will show the number of growth in safety regulations.Figure 1.3 Growth in safety regulations (Alderton, 2004)In addition to these improvements, there is a reasonable reduction of oil spill to the environment. According to the IMO, total oil spill in 2004 was 15000 tons comparison to the year 1975 was 2.13 million tons.On the other hand, Table 1.1 shows the annual casualties of world merchant fleet between the years 1993 and 2002.Table 1.1 (Alderton, 2004)Year1993-19971998199920002002Total Casualties10785739997Comparison to the 1950s, by the help of improvements, marine industry becomes safer but needs continuous improvement. Everybody who involves in this industry must always look for zero defects. As shown in Table 1.1, although IMO has made great parkway and reduced the rate of accidents in marine industry, casualties and pollution can lifelessness happen and remain constant. The reasons for these are1. Implementation of IMO RulesIn order to put the IMO rules into force effectively, all parties such as governments, shipping companies, flag states and port states have to make a reasonable effort. The mentioned parties have different responsibilities gibe to their positions while adapting and controlling these rules. These parties must have continuous quislingism and parley with each other but generally they can not. Lack of collaboration leads to misunderstandings and difficulties to put these rules into practice.2. Continuous Revision of Rules and RegulationsThe rules and regulations are updated periodically to keep up with the modern conditions. Although some rules have convenient level of safety, changed several generation and become more complicated. The more complexity means the more problems.3. The cranny Between Developed and Develo ping CountriesDeveloping countries have an important place in shipping industry. They own a reasonable percentage of world merchant fleet. Comparison to the developed countries, it is difficult to adapt the rules immediately because of their government procedures and financial situations. It is not just the IMO problem it is one of the biggest problems in our world. or else of offering temporary solutions such as loans investments, guidance and assistance will be more effective.4. Human SideTo manage marine safety, there must be an excellent co-operation between the people who are on board and ashore. Continuous improvement is needed for both management level and crew. Training and certification must be compulsory under the quality procedures. As mentioned before, ISM Code and STCW are established for this purpose but in the last hundred years, owners decided to flag out and precious to work with low cost crew to get more profitss. As a result of this, accidents appeared because o f untalented crew. For this particular purpose, maritime training centres are extremely important for safety.5. Application Costs of RegulationsIt is not easy to implement the rules and regulations because they need powerful financial situation. In addition to this, the average age of world vessel fleet is going old. Instead of investing specie to these old vessels, owners prefer doing small improvements to the existing systems. Low cost high profit concept leads danger in this industry. At this point, new buildings come out and take an important part. Owners are now investing more money on technological improvements under construction phase with the societies control for safer life. pertly designed ships includes easily operated navigation techniques such as AIS, GPS and radars, stability calculations, tank cleaning systems, fire systems and etc. .In conclusion, mentioned conventions within IMO concept reached to a reasonable success in marine industry. On the other hand, contin uous improvement by taking advantage of technology, collaboration and communication of involved parties are still needed to achieve zero accident targets and clean seas.