MIIP014 Quantitative risk assessment tool MARCOL for collisions between ships and offshore wind farms
Extending the capabilities of existing MarcolXMF tool in order to perform the collision assessment between ships and offshore wind turbines.
A large part of the ongoing energy transition will be harvested from wind sources in the North Sea where several offshore wind farms are already operating and many more will be installed in the future. This raises the issue of coexistence between wind farms and other users of the North Sea, such as shipping, fisheries, recreational vessels and others.
The close proximity of many vessels and offshore wind farms increases the risk of collisions. The consequences of such accidents can range from minor structural damage to the collapse of the offshore wind turbine, ship sinking, pollution and the loss of human life at worst. For this reason, a risk analysis for ship collision events that includes an assessment of the impact consequences becomes a necessity.
The proposed project aims at extending the capabilities of existing software tools in order to enable such quantitative risk assessments and contribute to a safe cohabitation of all users of the North Sea.
The aim is to develop a software tool that can be directly applied into the assessment of collision risk and impact consequences of ships and offshore wind turbines. We propose to build on the existing knowledge and experience with MARCOLXMF and bring this tool to a new version focused on wind farm collision assessments.