Magazine for maritime professionals | Volume 142, December 2021 | www.swzmaritime.nl 12
Hypersonic missiles
How will they impact naval shipbuilding?
TopTier JIP seeks to restore confidence
Container ship safety
Spatial planning in the NORTH SEA
Floating offshore wind
The next frontier
The need for spatial
planning
The cover of this December edition of SWZ|Maritime shows
something different than what readers are usually offered. Instead
of an often brand-new ship in its elements, we show a
map of the Netherlands and a big chunk of the Dutch part of the
North Sea. The brightly illuminated thick lines show the shipping
routes. But it also shows a lot of other things as all the
other smaller and bigger dots mean that there is something
standing or floating at sea, such as offshore wind farms, with
their turbines and transformer stations, the platforms, big and
small, for the production of oil and gas, the designated anchoring
areas for ships that wait to be dealt with at our ports and
just here and there a fishing ship that catches badly needed
healthy food for our dining tables.
All these functions at sea need construction, thinking and R&D
to develop. Besides the bigger ships that are mostly designed
and built in Asia nowadays, a lot of the fixed or floating objects
and the smaller ships are still built at Dutch yards. And what
this map shows very clearly, is how busy the North Sea is. It
has long ceased to be that large open, empty plain where you
don’t meet anyone until you reach the other side of the sea or
ocean. On the contrary, sailing the North Sea means taking into
account more and more rules, injunctions and prohibitions.
Dutch fishermen in particular are experiencing ever more restrictions
in practising their profession. For them, the headline on
the cover of spatial planning means more and more often a battle
for space, just like the farmers on land that are constantly
faced with the encroachment of housing and business activity.
And just like on land, politicians have to choose constantly who
gets priority. The government has developed spatial planning to
bring the different interests in a dynamic balance and this will
also have to happen for the North Sea.
Our editor Johan de Jong from MARIN has put this issue on the
agenda of SWZ|Maritime by coordinating a range of articles
about this subject with contributions of Rijkswaterstaat (the
Dutch Directorate-General for Public Works and Water Management),
fisheries lobbyist Pim Visser, Lloyd’s Register’s
George Kallenos, and our editor Sander Klos. And if the cover
picture intrigues you as it does me and are interested in what
digitalisation of processes can offer us in terms of new interesting
insights, you have to read the article of PhD candidate
Solange van der Werff of the TU Delft. I hope our readers will
enjoy reading these articles just as much as I have.
Our overcrowded country needs
space to enable our energy transition,
extend our agriculture and collect
building materials while proceeding
with the mining of fossils,
fishing and recreating and continuing
to give safe passage to ships.
Recently, North Korea, China and
Russia tested hypersonic missiles.
Australia, India, France, Germany
and Japan are carrying out research.
The US will accelerate developments
and wants to start production
next year.
Hypersonic missiles disrupt naval
warfare
The North Sea in transition
The loss of containers raised public and political concerns
on the safety and environmental impact of modern container
ships. In September 2020, MARIN launched the JIP
“TopTier” to improve the safety of container handling and
operation.
Cover: Solange van der Werff (TU Delft) visualised the intensity of traffic on the
North Sea using AIS data. The more vessels cross the same area, the brighter the
colour becomes.
Restoring confidence in the safety
of container ships
36
4 Dutch news
6 Markets
8 Maritime monthly
15 Global news
20 Marine spatial planning from a fisheries
perspective
23 AIS data analysed
26 Naar een digitalisering van de Noordzee
29 A changing landscape for offshore wind
32 Wel of niet meepraten over ‘nieuwe’ Noordzee?
42 Metstrade not too much affected by pandemic
44 Integrating IMDG and loading and stability
software
45 Nieuwe uitgaven
46 Mars Report
48 Verenigingsnieuws KNVTS