Classification of Inland Ships

Abstract

The current classification of inland ships for the Inland Ship Crew Competency Certificates cannot adapt to the inland river's development. Owning its own characteristics, the inland river main division point of 200GT and 1600GT referring to STCW Convention 1978 however cannot meet the trend of advancing ships classification and widening division range. In this paper, the inland ships first were divided into nineteen classes by the total tonnage, and then we selected three indicators which were the navigation equipment, radio equipment, the degree of maneuvering difficulty in terms of ordered specimen cluster analysis. Finally we divided the inland ships into four categories with the total tonnage and named the new classification method, the point being 300GT, 1000 GT and 1800 GT.