First held in 1961, and there after every three years, the International Ship and Offshore Structures Congress (ISSC) is one of the most prestigious global forums for information exchange by leading experts undertaking and applying marine structural research. This summer ushered in the 20^th ISSC held jointly between Liege, Belgium and Amsterdam, the Netherlands in early September. Dr Adam Sobey and Dr Yikun Wang were invited to attend the congress as observers, representing FSI/SMMI and the University of Southampton.
 

The first day of the congress was held in the Palais des Congrès Liège with with a tour of the experimental facilities at the University of Liège in the afternoon and dinner at the Chateau Colonster, before a second day travelling down the river Meuse with an afternoon visit to the test facilities at the Flanders Hydraulic Research Laboratory and the final two days held in Egmond ann Zee, a small village near the sea in Holland.

Unique to ISSC, the four-day event was composed of presentations and formal discussions given by eight technical and eight specialist committees. Each committee is formed of a number of multi-national experts from a wide range of marine structure related disciplines from Ultimate Strength to Loads and Environment. Committees have worked over the last three years prior to the congress to generate reports reviewing recent research outcomes, as well as identifying future research areas requiring attention. During the congress, each committee chair has to summarise the report, which is followed by comments given by the official discusser. The chair is required to present responses on behalf of the committee. All comments and responses are captured as part of the ISSC 2018 publications.

As the first time attending the congress, both Adam and Yikun appreciated the comprehensive reports written by each committee, participated in the professional discussions on relevant research topics and enjoyed networking with experts from universities, research institutes, navy/defence and classification societies. For the next three-year period, Southampton is well represented with Adam on Committee IV.2 – Design Methods, Yikun on Committee III.1 – Ultimate Strength and Dr Blair Thornton on Committee V.8 – Subsea Technology. We look forward to hearing their committee experience in Vancouver 2021!
If you are interested in reading the congress proceedings, please follow this link.

In January 2018, The Maritime Robotics Laboratory took delivery of the C-Cat 3 – a 3m autonomous catamaran from ASV Global. The vessel is the first of a new class of vessels for ASV and is small enough to easily transport and mobilise but is able to carry a significant range of payloads.
The vessel will be used both for scientific and engineering research in the development of autonomous systems. The investment was funded by an EPSRC RAS Capital Award.

As part of the vessel delivery, Dr Blair Thornton, Dr Nick Townsend and Dr Jon Downes undertook a C-Cat 3 specific ASV Remote Operator Course with ASV Global. This involved undertaking the RYA powerboat level 2 handling course (including a very wet passage from Porchester to Cowes and back) and 3 days operations with the C-Cat3 from a support vessel. All involved were very grateful for the efforts of ASV Global to run this course which provided good insights into the workings of the ASView® system and experience of operating this class of vessel.
See also: https://www.asvglobal.com/university-southampton-takes-delivery-asv-global-c-cat-3-autonomous-vessel/ 
 

Jin Wei Lim, a Leverhulme Trust PhD student in the Faculty of Engineering and the Environment at the University of Southampton has been awarded first place in the OCEANS’18 MTS/IEEE conference help at the Kobe Convention Center in Japan. This year’s competition had more than 100 entries from around the world. The best fifteen entries were chosen to present their posters to a panel of 11 judges, with the best three posters being awarded prizes at a ceremony held during the conference gala dinner.

The winning poster, entitled ‘Automated Interpretation of Seafloor Visual Maps Obtained using Underwater Robots’ demonstrates the feasibility of using Convolutional Neural Networks (CNNs) to automatically interpret large visual maps of the seafloor in volcanically active regions. These regions are often densely populated by deep-sea biological communities and the ability to efficiently document the diversity and distribution of different species over large spatial scales is critical for monitoring the environmental in the context of deep-sea mining. The study shows how the manual process of identifying and annotating individual animals can be automated given a sufficient number of labelled examples. The study further demonstrates how the classification uncertainty of the automated algorithm relates to the number of training examples used for different species of animal, giving important insights regarding how human efforts can be optimized and best leveraged by machines.

Jin Wei commented “This conference has been an eye opening experience. I am really honoured to be able to share my work on this prestigious program, and meet many amazing industry professionals and researchers from all around the globe.”
The research was carried out by Jin Wei as part of his undergraduate final year individual project with the Fluid Structure Interactions group. Jin Wei is currently looking at characterising uncertainty in automated data processing techniques used in ocean research under the supervision of Dr Blair Thornton, Prof Adam Prugel-Bennet and Prof Damon Teagle.

MaritimeUK has recently highlighted the on-going collaborations between University and Industry to enhance the UK’s maritime sector capabilities.
Current Maritime Engineering MSc student Hongseok Bae discusses his research project into the use of AIS data to evaluate ship operational efficiency.  The Automatic Identification System (AIS) is fitted on board all large ships and provides a continual update as to a particular vessel’s position, speed and other operational data via radio connections to land or satellite receivers. Models can be built to estimate for a given ship speed and type what emissions will be generated.
The University of Southampton’s expertise in marine and maritime disciplines is nurtured through the Southampton Marine and Maritime Institute (SMMI). SMMI is a community of academics whose interests and research are linked to the natural marine environment and the human intervened maritime realms. By working across the traditional disciplinary divides, we can better address some of today’s global marine & maritime challenges.
The SMMI constitutes world class, authoritative, independent expertise, spanning both the marine and maritime sectors. We foster new research collaborations, educate the next generation of maritime leaders, and generate knowledge and intelligence for businesses of all sizes, government at all scales and organisations of all kinds. SMMI staff and students, by themselves and in partnership with industry, create new technologies and innovations to stimulate economic growth and improve quality of life and the environment.