Skip to main content
Go to the home page of the European Commission (opens in new window)
English English
CORDIS - EU research results
CORDIS
Content archived on 2024-06-18

Development of a combined sea anchor and connector to be deployed by helicopter in order to prevent sea vessels in drift from grounding or colliding with offshore installations

Objective

The European Union is the largest maritime power in the world with 40% of its fleet. Almost 90% of its external and over 40% of its internal trade is transported by sea. The natural wealth of the ocean has an intrinsic value for the biodiversity of Europe as well as for the support of key functions for adjacent regions and populations. Oil spills have a catastrophic impact on the marine environment and incurs enormous costs and suffering in the aftermath. A large part of the oil spillage comes from drifting ships running aground or breaking up. The project idea is to develop a novel and salvage tool by innovatively combining a light-weight sea anchor and connector. The system will be deployed by helicopter onto a ship in distress, thus reducing drift velocity and through that the chance of grounding or other potential disasters by providing extra time for Emergency Towing Vessels (ETVs). Further functionality is added by including a towing connection to the sea anchor, thereby providing arriving ETV with an easy-to-access pick-up buoy, which relieves them of the hazardous task of connecting to the ship in distress. A major issue in the project is lowering the weight of the system to enable helicopter transport. This calls for studies in material science and will influence the dimensioning of the anchor, which will be based on simulations of multi-body behaviour at sea under the influence of wind and waves. At the ship and tanker traffic increases there is a reduction in ETV preparedness, leading to a potentially unsafe situation. The ShipArrestor will aid in restoring and improving the oil spill prevention and salvage preparedness for ships up to 100,000 tonnes. In addition to the obvious environmental benefits of introducing the ShipArrestor, fisheries and tourist enterprises, of which a vast proportion is SMEs, will not have their livelihood ruined from oil pollution. The benefits for the project members are a valuable new tool in their production.

Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)

CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: https://op.europa.eu/en/web/eu-vocabularies/euroscivoc.

You need to log in or register to use this function

Programme(s)

Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.

Topic(s)

Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.

Call for proposal

Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.

FP7-SME-2007-1
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.

BSG-SME - Research for SMEs

Coordinator

MIKO MARINE AS
EU contribution
€ 423 068,00
Address
RUSSELOKKVEIEN VIKA 26
0251 OSLO
Norway

See on map

Activity type
Private for-profit entities (excluding Higher or Secondary Education Establishments)
Links
Total cost

The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.

No data

Participants (7)

My booklet 0 0