The berthing of an ultra large ship is always a difficult issue and becomes yet more complex when vessels must be handled in restricted manoeuvring areas of limited depth, exposed to a forceful crosswind, or manoeuvring in a strong current, or all three. The final approaching manoeuvre and precise positioning is particularly demanding at container terminals where many STS cranes are located along the quay, seriously limiting margin for error in the process of mooring a ship, especially when the cranes are located nearby a bridge wing or at the very edge of the pier. In order to avoid collisions, the final manoeuvre (side-push) must be fully controlled; the ship’s orientation must be parallel with the quay while maintaining the minimum lateral approaching velocity without significantly shifting the vessel longitudinally. The mooring of a Ro-Ro vessel is occasionally even more challenging: a precise docking manoeuvre is normally executed without any towing assistance. In this paper low cost laser-based berthing and docking systems developed for the ports of Koper and Swinousce are presented and several berthing manoeuvres are analysed and compared with the most commonly used GNSS-based navigational aid system portable pilot units (PPU).

The increasing traffic and complexity of navigation at sea require advanced decision support systems to ensure greater safety. In this study, we propose a novel decision support system that employs fuzzy logic to improve situational awareness and to assist navigators in collision avoidance during multi-vessel encounters. The system is based on the integration of the rules of the Convention on International Regulations for Preventing Collisions at Sea (COLREGs) and artificial intelligence techniques. The proposed decision model consists of two main modules to calculate the initial encounter conditions for the target vessels, evaluate the collision risk and navigation situation based on COLREG rules, sort the target vessels, and determine the most dangerous vessel. Fuzzy logic is used to calculate the collision avoidance maneuver for the selected ship, considering the closest point of approach, relative bearing, and the ship’s own speed. Simulation tests demonstrate the effectiveness of the fuzzy-based decision model in scenarios with two ships. However, in complex situations with multiple ships, the performance of the model is affected by possible conflicts between evasive maneuvers. This highlights the need for a cooperative collision avoidance algorithm for all vessels in high traffic areas.

The Karavanke tunnel forms an important link between Slovenia and Austria. The almost 8 km long tunnel is operated with bi-directional traffic and does not have dedicated escape routes. Moreover, the ventilation in case of fire does not satisfy requirements of the EU Directive 2004/54/EC that specifies the minimum requirements for tunnels in the trans-European road network. The paper present results of the research conducted regarding the possibility of upgrade the existing system in order to reach the required level of safety at lower costs possible. It is shown that with simple but novel adaptations of the ventilation system, a sizeable increase in the overall level of safety can be achieved. The methodology applied is a combination of a simple pipe model for tunnel ventilation and for detailed fluid dynamics analysis the CFD model is used. The existing ventilation system that in fire ventilation extracts smoke from a single duct is replaced with the smoke extraction from both ducts applying four axial fans. The analysis is focused on air/smoke flow through the vents and ducts and on pressure drops calculated over the length of the ventilation duct and its influence on the total flow. The change of the flow condition also has influence on ventilation fan operation point that is investigated in the paper as well