To Strengthen Water Traffic Safety Supervision is to Boost the Process of Building Country with Strong Traffic Network

In recent years, as international and domestic trade closely exchanged, one of the fundamental ways of cargo transportation water freight volume increased sharply; in 2019, the national port completed a cargo throughput of 14.351 billion tons, an increase of 2.5% over the previous year. Obviously, the multiplication of port throughput heralds the rise in the number of ships entering and leaving the port. In this context, water traffic and production safety in various water is as of paramount importance.

At the beginning of 2020, the Maritime Safety Administration of the Ministry of Transport held its annual plenary conference to conduct a comprehensive analysis and summary of the production safety and water traffic safety situation in 2019. Also, it put forward a new condition of safety ideas , the work of the maritime system in 2020 to re-emphasize and redeploy the work of production safety. The conference further implemented the responsibility for work safety and the basis of safety production, with the aim of focusing on preventing and resolving significant risks and investigating and managing major hidden dangers. At the same time, it mentioned that we must firmly prevent serious accidents, reduce common accidents, and make every effort to safeguard the lives and properties of the people. In so doing, we can ensure the continued stability of the transportation production safety situation and provide reliable safety guarantees for constructing a country with robust traffic and transportation.

(XU Peng is speaking at the conference)

At the conference, XU Peng, director of the Vessel Traffic Service Center of Caofeidian Maritime Safety Administration, made a report on the water traffic safety situation of the Administration in 2019 and comprehensively analyzed the water traffic accidents, hazards, maritime safety supervision, safety situation and so on in Caofeidian area. In addition, he proposed professional suggestions and opinions on the next stage of water traffic safety supervision and national maritime management in the area.

XU Peng is a senior ship engineer and intelligent traffic technology expert in China. Apart from being the director of Vessel Traffic Service Center of Caofeidian Maritime Safety Administration, he is also an external tutor of the School of Artificial Intelligence and Data Science of Hebei University of Technology and is responsible for the scientific cultivation of scientific and technological talents in navigation technology in China.

For over a decade, he has been deeply involved in the field of intelligent transportation technology and has independently developed intelligent technology for maritime management, such as Intelligent Vessel Traffic Management System V1.0, Intelligent Maritime Comprehensive Management Service Platform V1.0, and Comprehensive Monitoring And Alarm Management Software for Major Risk Sources in Ports V1.0. These technological achievements were put into the water traffic supervision of the Caofeidian Maritime Safety Administration and local maritime management agencies, which greatly improved the efficiency of the maritime administration and agencies and reduced the frequency of water accidents in the waters under their jurisdiction. Further, XU Peng led his team to compile the Vessel Traffic Service System (VTS) Construction Specification in 2018 to serve as a standard specification for the transformation and upgrading of VTS systems in maritime administrations nationwide, which is a significant contribution to improving the engineering construction management level of China’s maritime VTS systems and promoting the scientific, standardization and intelligence of VTS construction management, accelerating the goal of building a solid traffic power in China.

“The future upgrading of China’s maritime management is primarily aimed at two directions: First, the construction of a comprehensive set of intelligent systems for waterway traffic, including ship intelligence technology, intelligent maritime technology, digital waterway technology, and port automation technology and other high- tech marine technology. Second, in line with the times to improve the water traffic safety management system, such as upgrading the import and export port reporting standards for ships and enhancing the jurisdiction of the emergency work mechanism. Above all, science and technology constitute a primary productive force, and intelligence and digitalization is the inevitable trend of maritime management development, so the waterway traffic intelligence system will be an integral pillar of the future marine management system, and it is crucial for the construction of waterway traffic intelligence system. It is equally necessary for the development of technology and the management system to cooperate at the same time. Thus the future water traffic safety management system needs to be modified and refined according to the actual needs in a timely manner to ensure the water traffic safety of vessels in respective waters.” XU Peng said that the next phase of water traffic safety supervision in Caofeidian jurisdiction probably involves five aspects, respectively, is to further strengthen the crackdown on illegal acts of ships in water-related engineering, to further improve the safety and security of LNG ships, to sustain and deepen the collision prevention of commercial and fishing vessels, to reinforce the protection of hazardous cargoes transported by waterways and ship anti-pollution supervision and enhance the risk prevention and management of hidden dangers in the ships with passengers and to press ahead with water traffic safety management construction. Followed by these principles, we promote the localization and intelligent transformation of China’s maritime management. His rigorous speech and professional views at the conference were unanimously approved by the leaders and experts, and his suggestions and opinions will act as a reference standard for the revision of maritime management guidelines of maritime administration around the country.

“It is a prerequisite to strengthening waterway transport risk prevention and treatment of hidden dangers for building a new paradigm of mutual construction, joint governance, and shared benefits in Caofeidian maritime affairs and promoting the building of national wisdom based upon maritime affairs.” XU Peng hopes that the level of waterway traffic safety management in China will stay on the track to steadily improve and ensure the safety of people’s lives and property on waterways. (Writer/GONG Jun)