Abstract
This chapter is a proactive risk exploration of hypothetical remotely operated search and rescue (SAR) ships in the Canadian Arctic. The harsh and remote environment in the region, combined with complicated coastlines and many uncharted or poorly charted traffic routes, makes it one of the most challenging SAR areas. Canada has committed itself to safety, environmental protection and sovereign presence in the area by maintaining joint SAR centres of federal government departments and mobilizing private volunteers. The characteristics of Canadian SAR response in the Arctic rest with its high dependency on heavy equipment such as aircraft, helicopters and icebreakers, entailing prolonged hours of response time. As recent climate change impacts and maritime traffic increase in the northern waters disclose safety gaps, innovation in SAR assets is anticipated. The safety gaps may be filled by state-of-the-art remote control technology. This chapter discusses remotely operated unmanned ships for SAR response, exploring their opportunities, risk dimensions and governance implications.
Highlights
Could we imagine a ship remotely controlled from a distance of 8000 km? This long-distance test has been successfully passed, and a vessel-borne sensor with machine learning has advanced to identify the brand name of beer cans in the water (Wärtsilä 2017; Baraniuk 2017)
This chapter aims at exploring the opportunities, risk dimensions and governance implications of unmanned remotely operated SAR ships (RO-SARS) in the Canadian Arctic context from the sociotechnical and legal perspectives
There are complex and uncertain risks that can be identified under the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC) risk framework: the qualification and certification of remote controllers, the technical reliability of sensor technology, the stability of communication links, the hazards arising from the breach of cyber safety and cybersecurity, the probable interface errors between RO-SARS and remote controllers and the new design requirements for remote rescue functions such as the remotely operated ship- to-ship personnel transfer crane
Summary
Could we imagine a ship remotely controlled from a distance of 8000 km? This long-distance test has been successfully passed, and a vessel-borne sensor with machine learning has advanced to identify the brand name of beer cans in the water (Wärtsilä 2017; Baraniuk 2017). One Australian drone successfully searched and rescued persons at sea by dropping an inflatable life raft (Haddou-Riffi 2018). In line with these technical innovations, in May 2018, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) coined a new term, maritime autonomous surface ships (MASS), to describe these new technologies. Given the limitations of the present SAR response time (Chase 2013) and the safety risks to SAR responders in the Arctic, the authors anticipate the third stage of unmanned remotely controlled ships to be able to play a potential role as a breakthrough in SAR response. This chapter aims at exploring the opportunities, risk dimensions and governance implications of unmanned RO-SARS in the Canadian Arctic context from the sociotechnical and legal perspectives. Given the Canadian northern SAR context, what opportunities and risk dimensions are anticipated if and when unmanned RO-SARS are deployed? Second, what governance implications and risk prevention measures can be drawn, considering preliminary risk assessment of RO-SARS under the International Risk Governance Council (IRGC) framework? The outcome of this exploratory analysis will likely contribute to developing a conceptual design, risk characterization and regulatory model of RO-SARS in later research
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