EfficienSEA is an EU Baltic Sea Region 3-years project with participation of 17 partners from six countries in the region including Norway. The lead partner is Danish Maritime Safety Administration (Farvandsvaesenet) and some other partners are Swedish Maritime Administration, Swedish Transport Agency, SSPA Sweden, Finnish Maritime Administration, Norwegian Coastal Administration, Estonian Maritime Administration, Chalmers University of Technology, and Helsinki University of Technology.

The overall aim of the project is to enhance maritime safety and environmental state in the Baltic Sea region. The project will develop tools that can be applied to improve maritime safety through better information exchange and consistent practices throughout the region with regards to e-navigation, vessel traffic management, and risk management.

The objectives are:

• Contribute to the realisation of e-Navigation by building trans-national professional networks to bring specialists together to develop the basic elements of the ICT solutions of e-Navigation.
• Develop a tool for dynamic risk assessment to be used for development of improved risk reduction measures such as VTS operators as well as for emergency response use
• Create a best possible maritime traffic image
• Increase public awareness of the attractiveness of the maritime sector and to increase the number of competent applicants to maritime positions through communication and creative recruitment strategies?

The work carried out by SSPA will be focused on e-Navigation, Vessel Traffic Data and Maritime Planning and Dynamic Risk Management with a particular emphasis on the latter. The overall objective of “e-Navigation” work is to assess which of the emerging innovations in e-Navigation would make processing and dissemination of Maritime data/information more efficient and lead to improved maritime safety. Additionally a comprehensive best practice demonstration of the e-navigation concept will be carried out.

The “Vessel Traffic Data and Maritime Planning” work will address the safety challenges emerging from the growing competing uses of the sea, and has an expected outcome of recommendations for regulatory streamlining and simplification, together with better coordination between different authorities.

The “Dynamic Risk Management” work has an overall aim of developing and demonstrating different approaches for dynamically managing maritime traffic risk. The dynamic risk management developed should reduce the number and severity of accidents that lead to pollution of the marine environment, losses of human lives and hinder of welfare development.

The work by SSPA is supported by the EU and the Region Västra Götaland. The project started in the end of 2008 and will last to the end of 2011. It is classified by EU as “Strategic”

Contact: Project manager, Peter Grundevik, +46(0)31 772 90 15, peter.grundevik@sspa.se