Legal Disputes under Time Charter in Connection with the Stranding of the MV Ever Given

The MV Ever Given’s stranding in the Suez Canal in March 2021 prompted renewed awareness of the heightened risk of marine accidents in narrow channels as global shipping companies continuously expand vessel sizes. However, there has been limited consideration of ways to improve accident response, and little analysis of future-oriented liabilities and damage compensation schemes for similar maritime accidents. First, key issues related to the Suez Canal stranding accident were analyzed based on web crawling using the R studio program (Version: R-4.0.5) to extract text data from unstructured format text (HTML tags). We designed the research questions to address the key issues/disputes, such as definitions of legal terms related to the Ever Given’s stranding accident and the declaration of a general average (G/A), liability for maintaining seaworthiness, source of command authority over the captain, and liability for compensation for delay in delivery. Then, the liability of stakeholders was legally interpreted through causal inductive reasoning based on relevant legal theories and precedents. To help secure safe and sustainable shipping routes, this study demystifies the problems resulting from the side effects of the trend of ultra-large vessels based on technology bias, and will contribute to responses to similar accidents in the future.

Investigation of Resource Distribution Based on the Relationship Between Accident Regions and Accident Types

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between accident types and the regions where the accidents occur, and to examine whether the resources required for accident prevention are distributed appropriately in the accident regions. In the study, the relationship between seven different types of accidents that occurred in seven different regions between the years of 2001-2016 was analyzed through the correspondence analysis. This analysis has been preferred because of its successful applications in various studies on accidents in the literature. As a result of the study, a significant relationship was found between accident types and accident regions, which means accident types vary by regions and there are accident types specific to accident regions. Collision in the Istanbul, grounding in the Canakkale and capsize accidents in the Izmir were determined to be more frequent. These findings are consistent with previous studies. It has been observed that, among regions, there are some imbalances in the distribution of resources used for marine accident response.

Change of Scene: The Geographic Dynamics of Resilience to Vehicular Accidents

Most have experienced the impact of vehicular accidents, whether it was in terms of increased commute time, delays in receiving goods, higher insurance premiums, elevated costs of services, or simply absorbing the daily tragedies on the evening news. While accidents are common, the complexity and dynamics of transportation systems can make it challenging to infer where and when incidents may occur, a critical component in planning for where to position resources for emergency response. The use of response resources is critical given that more efficient emergency responses to accidents can decrease the vulnerability of socio-economic systems to perturbations in the transportation system and contribute to greater resilience. To explore the resilience of transportation systems to disruptions due to vehicular accidents, a location modeling approach is described for identifying the origins of optimal responses (and associated response time) over time based upon the location of known accidents and response protocols. The characteristics of the modeled response can then be compared with those of the observed response to gain insights as to how resilience may change over time for different portions of the transportation system. The change in the location of the optimal sites over time or drift, can also be assessed to better understand how changes in the spatial distribution of accidents can affect the nature of the response and system resiliency. The developed approach is applied to investigate the dynamics of accident response and network resiliency over a three year period using vehicular crash information from a comprehensive statewide database.