Risk Factors Analysis of Arctic Maritime Transportation System Using Structural Equation Modelling

In recent years, commercial voyages in polar waters have become reality through the development of marine technology and the melt of Arctic sea ice. However, the Arctic marine Transportation system (AMTS) is a dynamic system that various influencing factors are involved, such as extend sea ice, low temperature, complex earth’s magnetic fields, high sea state, poor visibility, heavy wind, insufficient communication equipment and rescue aids and so on. These hazards ask for enormous challenges to the safety management of AMTS. This paper analyses risk scenarios and associated risk factors, and present a preliminary model to express the interrelationships among the selected risk factors in the AMTS. First of all, risk factors are identified to the specific hazardous scenarios. For this, a typical voyage is chosen as a case study, and the interrelationships among the selected risk factors are discussed by structural equation model (SEM). Additionally, a preliminary SEM is proposed to guide the future studies on the risk analysis of the AMTS. INTRODUCTION The Arctic Ocean is seen as an important water area to shipping industry as well as economic development. There are two classic shipping routes in the Arctic Ocean, namely, Northeast Passage (NEP) and Northwest Passage (NWP), which are alternative routes connecting Europe with northeast Asian and North American respectively, in which NEP is a shorter shipping line compared with traditional Suez cannel (Schøyen, et al, 2011). Besides, ice breakers with higher grades can navigate directly over the North Pole in from Europe to north Asia and American. Shipping enterprises and researchers in the coastal countries and regions around the Arctic Ocean have paid much attention to the development of AMTS. Several European ships like “Marilee” and “Palva” have crossed the ice-covered Arctic Ocean to a few ports in northeast Asian with reference to northern sea route (NSR) transit statistics. A Chinese merchant vessel “Yongsheng” has successfully conveyed iron bars from China to Rotterdam port via NEP (Zhao, 2014). With reference to the estimation in Zhang, et al. (2013), in 2030, natural gas and containers’ freight transport from the Arctic regions to East Asian will rise to 10 and 17.43 million tonnage, respectively. Considering the huge demand of cargos transportation in Polar Regions, NEP has great potential to become a regular shipping route in the near future. On account of the severe navigational conditions in the Arctic Ocean, the AMTS is seen as a dynamic system that various influencing factors are involved, such as extend sea ice, low temperature, earth’s magnetic fields, high sea stage, poor visibility, heavy wind and so on. Compared with navigation in the open sea, polar voyages suffer some special events like icing and getting stuck in ice. International Maritime Organization (IMO) proposed a polar regulat ion POAC’15 Trondheim, Norway Proceedings of the 23rd International Conference on Port and Ocean Engineering under Arctic Conditions June 14-18, 2015 Trondheim, Norway