Quantification of the risk reduction potential of autonomous navigation

Autonomous ships have become a topic of interest for an increasing number of researchers over the last few years. Most of the research that is being performed focuses on autonomous navigation. An important driver for this research is the belief that autonomous navigation will increase safety at sea. In order to evaluate the possible safety benefit of autonomous navigation, it is essential to have an understanding of the risk associated with navigation-related accidents. In this paper, a monetary quantification of the risk associated with navigation-related accidents will be presented, to support designers in determining the acceptable costs of an autonomous navigation system.. It is the intention to provide order-of-magnitude figures for the annual risk for different ship types and sizes. Although it is acknowledged that the analysis comes with uncertainties, the results provide an overview contribution that different damage cases make to the overall risk per year, associated with navigation-related accidents. It is found that the annual risk can be expected to be between €1.5 billion and €2.5 billion, or a €45k to €75k risk per vessel per year. Consequently, the maximum annual safety benefit of autonomous navigation is equal to this figure if autonomous navigation will be able to prevent all navigation-related accidents.