Health and Safety
Executive / Commission
Research reports
For many years the primary resource for monitoring and appraisal of the collision risks to UKCS offshore oil and gasinstallations posed by approaching vessels was the attendant ERRVand for the many units this is still the case.However, collision threat detection via radar watchkeeping is just one of a number of duties that the ERRV crew needsto conduct. Notwithstanding the foregoing, it is known that the tools they had to work with for collision threat detectionwere subject to a number of limitations. More recently there have been technological advancements leading to therelatively limited deployment of automated radar detection and tracking systems, the so called ‘hybrid’ radar, tosupplement the work of the ERRVcrews and assist in the overall collision risk management strategy. Other changes inthe global regulatory regime of the marine industry has also seen the implementation of automatic identification system(AIS) equipment which may also have an impact on vessel identification and the processes through which an errantvessel may be warned off when approaching an installation. These factors were investigated in detail during the courseof the study and the results arediscussed both for how they affect current operations and may be adopted in the futureto enhance offshore safety.
This report and the work it describes were funded by the Health and Safety Executive (HSE). Its contents, including any opinions and/or conclusions expressed, are those of the authors alone and do not necessarily reflect HSE policy.
The Research Report Series are produced in Adobe Acrobat. The use of the latest version of the software is recommended which is available at the Adobe website via the link on this page.
Assistance in the use of Adobe Acrobat PDF files is available on our FAQs page.