Autonomous Ships: Regulatory Scoping Exercise Completed
The Maritime Safety Committee (MSC) of the International Maritime Organization (IMO), at its 103rd session in May 2021, has completed a regulatory scoping exercise to analyze relevant ship safety treaties, in order to assess how Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) could be regulated.
The completion of the scoping exercise represents an all important first step, paving the way to focused discussions to ensure that regulation will keep pace with technological developments.
The scoping exercise was initiated in 2017 to determine how safe, secure and environmentally sound MASS operations might be addressed in IMO instruments.
The exercise involved assessing a substantial number of IMO treaty instruments under the remit of the MSC and identifying provisions which applied to MASS and prevented MASS operations; or applied to MASS and do not prevent MASS operations and require no actions; or applied to MASS and do not prevent M
Maritime Activity Reports, Inc.
(Photo: IMO)
As the maritime industry continues to develop and test the technologies required for safe autonomous vessel operations, many regulatory questions have remained.
Setting out to help answer some of these questions, the International Maritime Organization s (IMO) Maritime Safety Committee (MSC) has recently completed a regulatory scoping exercise to analyze relevant ship safety treaties, in order to assess how maritime autonomous surface ships (MASS) could be regulated.
The scoping exercise was initiated in 2017 to determine how safe, secure and environmentally sound MASS operations might be addressed in IMO instruments, ad its completion represents a first step, paving the way to focused discussions to ensure that regulation will keep pace with technological developments, the IMO said.
China’s advance in Panama: An update
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The June 2017 recognition of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) by the Panamanian government of Juan Carlos Varela set in motion an array of Chinese activities in Panama, as well as diplomatic changes in nearby El Salvador and the Dominican Republic all of which grabbed the attention and concern of Washington. The election of the opposition Democratic Revolutionary Party’s (PRD) Laurentino Cortizo in 2019 has since led to greater scrutiny of various projects involving China.
Panama’s economy was one of the hardest hit in the region by the COVID-19 pandemic, contracting by 17.9 percent in 2020, furthering its vulnerability to Chinese advances. For China, Panama’s position both as an international commercial and banking hub and a logistical choke point, due to its geographic positioning gives it strategic importance. At the same time, the new administration of President