United States Maritime Administration

Effective water surface object detection is essential for maritime surveillance, enabling accurate identification of vessels, floating debris, and other potential hazards. This paper presents a detailed analysis of YOLO11, the latest advancement in the YOLO series of deep learning models, focusing exclusively on water surface object detection tasks. Incorporating advanced architecture, YOLO11 improves detection accuracy, robustness, and efficiency under variable lighting, weather, and sea states. Comprehensive evaluations using two maritime datasets show superior performance in detecting small, occluded, and dynamic objects compared to YOLOv8, YOLOv9 and YOLOv10, while maintaining real-time inference. The findings highlight YOLO11’s potential to enhance maritime surveillance, enabling safer and more efficient monitoring systems.

Many recent research papers have focused on improving the YOLO algorithm to enhance ship recognition accuracy and speed. However, little attention has been paid to the detection performance comparison between different versions of the original YOLO algorithms. Moreover, current ship image sets are either too few in categories or are aerial images and satellite remote sensing images which are unsuitable for Maritime Safety Administration. Based on the actual needs of the maritime department, we curated a dataset, ShipForMSA, containing 16 ship types with 9216 pictures of real-life photographs in total. We compared and analyzed the performance of five commonly used YOLO algorithms on the dataset by using Grad-CAM. We also designed a YOLO algorithm-based ship detection and recognition system with a recognition accuracy of 95.75%.

This article analyses the activities of pirates and measures to prevent piracy during the Nguyen Dynasty (Vietnam) in the Central Sea in the nineteenth century.The research is based on an analysis of original sources compiled by historians of the Nguyen Dynasty.The results show that piracy was quite common in the East Sea in the nineteenth century.Pirates originated mainly from neighbouring countries such as China, Japan and Indonesia.The study also shows that the Nguyen Dynasty applied many measures to prevent piracy and it achieved practical results.The results of the research not only contribute to clarifying the history of maritime security in the nineteenth century but also suggest recommendations to ensure maritime security in the East Sea nowadays.

Abstract This study assessed the long‐term annual biofuel production capacity potential and price in the United States and shed light on the prospect of biofuel adoption for marine propulsion. A linear programming model was developed to assist the projections and provide insightful analyses. The projected long‐term (2040) maximum annual capacity of biofuels in the United States is 245 million metric tons (Mt) or 65 billion gallons of heavy fuel oil gallon equivalent (HFOGE) when based on the median feedstock availability. Between 2022 (near‐term) and 2040, the potential biofuel capacity increases by over 40%, attributed to increased feedstock availability. At a price range up to $500/t, biodiesel is the main product, and the annual capacity (12 Mt) is limited to feedstock availability constraints. Biodiesel and corn ethanol are the main biofuels at a price range up to $750/t. At a higher price point (above $750/t), the biofuel types and annual capacities increase substantially (218 Mt per year). Biofuels above this price include gasoline‐, jet‐, and diesel‐range blendstocks, as well as bio‐methanol, bio‐propane, and biogas. This study concludes that the US domestic feedstock availability coupled with advanced conversion technologies can produce substantial amounts of biofuels to achieve a critical mass and be impactful as alternative marine fuels. There is also a need to improve the biofuel price for marine shipping adoption. Policies and economic incentives that provide temporary financial support would help facilitate maritime biofuel adoption. © 2022 Alliance for Sustainable Energy, LLC. Biofuels, Bioproducts and Biorefining published by Society of Industrial Chemistry and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

The chapter discusses the varied governance structures among U.S. ports. Although these ports have made crucial strategic investments to meet the increasing needs of their customers, there is wide recognition that much more must be done for their seamless integration within the nation’s surface transportation system. The discussion includes ongoing infrastructure planning, integration of new technology and digitalization, public–private partnerships (P3 arrangements) option, and the availability of new credit assistance mechanisms for infrastructure planning and port development.KeywordsU.S. port governance structureInfrastructure needsState freight plansPort digitalizationP3 arrangementsCredit assistance program

As a newborn organization bearing the responsibility, ship management company plays more and more important role in the maritime safety and management. The article studies the concept of ship Management company, combined with several special rectification activities of The State Department of transportation, use online survey technology to analyze the reason of the problem, clarifies the position of the ship management company and gives some suggestions for the risk control and development of the company.

This paper reviewed oil spill incidents in Zhejiang coastal waters and characteristics of these incidents were analysed from geographical and seasonal distributions. Both operational and accidental oil spill incidents were examined, and key factors on ship accidents were identified. It was found that traffic density may be an important contributor to the oil spill incidents as key majority of accidents happened in busy waterways of important ports, especially Ningbo-Zhoushan area. The most significant oil spill risks were associated with navigational hazards of collision and grounding. The findings could be very useful for developing oil spill risk control and pollutants recovery measures.

A pilot scale investigation was undertaken at the Allegheny County Sanitary Authority (ALCOSAN) for approximately 12 months to evaluate the feasibility of using cross-flow microfiltration for the treatment of primary sewage effluent simulating combined and sanitary sewer overflows. Ceramic membranes of various pores sizes (0.05–1.4μm) were tested to understand the impact of cross-flow velocity, transmembrane pressure, and feed suspended solids on permeate water quality and permeate flux rate. A 0.2μm membrane operated with a 1.8m∕s cross-flow velocity, a transmembrane pressure below 2.1 bar and a backpulse frequency of 60 s showed the best performance among the conditions evaluated in this study. The 0.2μm membrane consistently met water quality objectives for fecal coliforms, E Coli, enterococci, BOD5, and suspended solids independent of the feed concentration, suggesting that direct discharge to surface water may be feasible. Feed suspended solids concentration and temperature influenced membrane permeate flux. Membrane cleaning with alkaline sodium hypochlorite solution is recommended as the first step followed by nitric acid cleaning if needed.

No international or U.S. Coast Guard requirements for the damage survival of dry cargo ships existed until February 1992, when an international, probabilistic damage standard for dry cargo ships was adopted by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) and the U.S. Coast Guard. A deterministic one-compartment damage standard has been applied to most U.S.-flag dry cargo ships built since 1937, either voluntarily or as a requirement for Federal assistance under the Maritime Administration. Despite some of its inherent deficiencies, it appears that the one-compartment standard has invariably resulted in the construction and operation of cargo ships whose damage survivability considerably exceeds the minimum survival criteria of the new IMO rules. Some weaknesses in the IMO damage rules are discussed and modifications suggested. The results of sensitivity studies incorporating proposed modifications are presented for a sample of U.S.-flag cargo ships. An evaluation of results suggests that the IMO rules in some instances may not go far enough in precluding unsafe ship design or operating practices; however, the proposed modifications will generally achieve much closer agreement between the survival requirements for these two methods. It is recommended that the proposed rules be modified to reflect a more rational approach in accordance with commonly accepted naval architectural practices, and to assure the highest level of damage survivability that is economically feasible.