Harilaos N. Psaraftis
Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering
National Technical University of Athens
Greece
ABSTRACT
The merchant fleets of many countries worldwide have experienced a
significant decline of competitiveness over the years. Phenomena such as national fleet
shrinkage and "flagging out" have been the main manifestations of such a
decline. Realizing that manning costs are frequently a major percentage of ship operating
costs, one of the measures that has been contemplated in order to reverse this trend has
been the design, development, and operation of highly automated ships manned by reduced
crews. The purpose of this paper is to present the results of an analysis that addresses
the question to what extent and under which scenarios can advanced technologies that
reduce manning improve merchant fleet competitiveness. The analysis is the product of a
European Commission project, and, as such, focuses on the fleets of European Union member
states. However, we also attempt to generalize the conclusions to other fleets of the
world,
KEY WORDS: Ship automation, reduced manning.
1. Introduction
The merchant fleets of many countries worldwide have experienced a
significant decline of competitiveness over the years. Loss of competitiveness is due to
the fact that ships in these fleets are generally more expensive to operate than other
ships, and shippers prefer the latter because of cost considerations.
Such a decline in competitiveness has been manifested in a number of
ways. The first is a net reduction of the number of ships in the fleets plagued by such a
problem. Such has been the fate of many of the fleets of the member states of the European
Union (EU) the years. According to Eurostat (1991), the total EU fleet numbered 11,023
ships in 1980, but only 6,431 ships in 1989. The share of EU fleet as a proportion of the
world fleet dropped from 27% to 16% during the same period. A similar (or sometimes more
severe) downward trend has been experienced by other fleets, such as for instance the one
of the United States. According to Cuneo (1993), the percentage of US commerce carried on
US flag vessels was
1 In this paper the term EU (European Union) collectively refers
to the 12 member states of the European Community before the 1995 enlargement, that is:
Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands,
Portugal, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The EU was enlarged to 15 member states on
1/1/1995, when Austria, Finland, and Sweden joined.
