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Welcome to the Maritime Topic Hub. The Maritime environment contains a wide range of actors and perspectives, including everything from harm prevention in areas such as ports, the safety of recreational craft, impact on the marine environment from emissions, analysis of NZ’s international supply chain and rescue co-ordination and incident response. The topic hubs seeks to support the widespread maritime whānau by promoting evidence, enabling connections across a dynamic and complex setting. We encourage anyone with an interest to come along and contribute.
GNS Science Te Pū Ao, NEMA and Maritime New Zealand participated in a discussion our evolving understanding of tsunami threat and what this means for how safe zones are define and how instructions about responding to risk are communicated to those active on the water, or managing a response.
This session had two parts.
The first looks at Mana Marina in Porirua Harbour, and models the implications for those on and near the water in what is a comparatively sheltered setting. Dr Jean Roger has conducted analyses of Mana Marina(external link), where sea level gauge data clearly reveal signals of six tsunamis in the past 12 years. Five of them were linked to powerful local, regional, and far-field earthquakes. To have a full picture of their impact inside and outside the marina, simulations of these events were generated using GNS’ COMCOT model(external link) and a dedicated high-resolution Digital Elevation Model (DEM) of Porirua Harbour. The presentation will demonstrate the models and their implications for the harbour if more powerful tsunamis were to strike, indicating that water could reach up to 10 m/s in harbour channels outside the Mana Marina, where the inlets are narrow. These speeds exceed that for safe navigation inside the marina, which leads us to the second presentation looking at how threats could be communicated.
In the second, Dr Sara Harrison’s presentation describes the outcome of research aimed at understanding mariners’ contexts(external link) when faced with a decision to evacuate from a tsunami threat, an under-researched topic given that mariners are particularly close to tsunami risk and impact. Sara will describe the outcome of her research on the decision-making processes of mariners in New Zealand, and explain what this means for how we might improve the design and delivery of tsunami advisory and warning messages for mariners. The study included interviews and surveys of both those with professional responsibilities, such as Harbourmasters, and recreational users. Sara will present the initial findings showing mariners’ tsunami risk perceptions and expectations of tsunami warnings; and discusses what this could mean for advisory messages to inform their protective action.
Video 1 – Jean Roger
On the 13th December the Maritime Hub hosted speakers talking about how systems to support autonomous ships could be designed. Will machines hold the wheel in the future, or will advanced technology and AI help the human captains do their job better?
Doug Owen’s presentation highlights a number of challenges the development maritime autonomous systems presents based on the experiences from the ECAMARIS project in Finland, and what the key ingredients for a successful way forward may be. Based on our experience developing concept designs for electronic lookout (E-Lookout) and Bridge 0 (a conditionally uncrewed bridge), Doug presents some of the general challenges revealed from working with the design of autonomous systems in practice.
In this hub event Brett Beamsley demonstrates the newly developed wave modelling system called SwellMap. He then looks at how the data that underpins marine forecasts is put together, looking specifically at the example of the forecast for Stand Up Paddleboards (SUPs), drawing on evidence on how SUP stability is affected by conditions on, above and below the water.
The MetService resource is a public-facing data tool, and therefore this work is framed in terms of how we present some of the science to the public so they can make good choices. Adrian Stephenson and Matt Wood of Maritime NZ will describe the approach taken by MNZ in partnership with MetService and the Safer Boating Forum, which helps us to make sense how we can share the science with the public to best effect.
Presenters: Adrian Stephenson, Brett Beamsley
Discussants: Bill Dawes, Matt Wood
Over the past two decades, wildlife tourism has experienced a noticeable shift from passive and distant observations towards highly interactive close encounters between humans and wild animals. This is particularly evident in the realm of marine wildlife tourism, with the growth of commercial swim-with programmes which target a range of large marine animals. These close in-water interactions are potentially dangerous for humans who are in an unfamiliar marine setting and who have little experience in, or understanding of, the risks associated with such encounters.
Join us to hear about the Swim-with Wildlife Adventure Recreation Model (SWARM) was created by Chantal Paget to explain the factors that influence perceptions and management of risk and safety in marine wildlife tourism interactions. Chantal’s PhD study used qualitative data obtained in three case studies featuring swim-with programmes with marine mammals and sharks revealed multiple influences apparent in the different stages of operations that affect key stakeholders. Such influences were identified as complex components to determine how risk and safety and the lived experience (including social media) of getting close to marine wildlife is constructed by tour participants and providers. This model provides suggestions for protocols and procedures that can foster safer and more sustainable interactions between people and marine wildlife in close encounters, and applies both to organised commercial operations and recreational interactions.
Dr Chantal Denise Pagel is a graduate of Auckland University of Technology (AUT), New Zealand and working as Regional Conservation Manager for the Royal Forest & Bird Protection Society. While becoming a conservation biologist, Chantal has worked with sustainable marine wildlife tourism since 2010, including the exploration of the global whale-watching phenomenon and baseline research on swim encounters with Norwegian killer whales.
This session included discussion technologies to track ship movements at sea. The first presentation was given by Gavin Birrell and Paul Garnham on co-operative sharing of location data to enable response agencies to respond effectively to maritime incidents. The presentation looks at comparisons between technology types and how some systems enable skippers to provide updates that are reassuring both for whānau and for response agencies.
The second presentation is about how AIS ship tracks represent a principal data source for global maritime domain awareness. Moritz Lehmann, a Senior Scientist with Starboard Maritime Intelligence, will describe how data science tools can reveal maritime activity such as fishing and suspicious behaviour.
View the slides here [PDF, 3.6 MB].
Maritime Topic Hub - Identifying ship behaviour using satellites.mp4(external link) from Maritime New Zealand(external link) on Vimeo(external link).
We have planes, we have ferries, and now Ocean Flyer presents seagliders. Join this Technology and Innovation / Maritime hub joint session to hear about an exciting new zero-emission approach to travel in Aotearoa.
Speakers: Shah Aslam, CEO – Ocean Flyer and John Hamilton, Director, Operations – Ocean Flyer.
on the 24th August we held a discussion on psychology and safety which featured academics, practitioners and government bodies. In this session Maria Carrera Arce of the World Maritime University provided a summary of a recently published paper(external link) on SAFEMODE, an EU project looking at how to build a safety learning culture.
WorkSafe Presentation - NZ Psychosocial Survey 2021 Key findings [PDF, 2.3 MB]
SafeMode Presentation - Data quality & trust for Safety Learning Culture [PDF, 6.1 MB]
The hub exists to:
From the cast-off meeting for the Maritime Hub, some common themes emerged to inform the Hub’s direction. These are described below and will act as priorities to define what new research and analysis is relevant for presentation and discussion through the hub.
These are grouped in following aspects of change:
This will be iterative and developed over time, the hub is a space for new ideas so if you think we’ve missed something do get in touch.
All are welcome to join. The topic hub activities will be tagged to make related documents easy to find. As bodies of water touch of all of us in some way, so too will the subjects covered. The domain is relevant to all the Ministry of Transport Outcomes Framework elements which will be one set of tags:
We will also tag material related to Maritime New Zealand’s System Outcomes:
Finally, we’ll also tag with three related areas of interest that apply widely, but particularly in governance:
Three main types of activity will take place:
The hub lead is Tom Eats (MNZ) Tom.Eats@maritimenz.govt.nz.
The hub is open to anyone interested in sharing or discussing maritime transport related experience, data, information and research. Email knowledgehub@transport.govt.nz to join.