ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Mar. Sci.
Sec. Marine Affairs and Policy
Volume 12 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fmars.2025.1601515
STPA Analysis for Safe Operation of Maritime Autonomous Surface Ship (MASS) under Degradation State
Provisionally accepted
- 1Korea Maritime Institute (KMI), Busan, Republic of Korea
- 2Korea Institute of Maritime and Fisheries Technology (KIMFT), Busan, Republic of Korea
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As Maritime Autonomous Surface Ships (MASS) move toward commercialization ensuring operational safety under degraded state has emerged as a critical challenge. This study conducts a risk analysis to find and identify hidden hazards that may occur when MASS operate in degraded states where the ship stays within the Operational Environment (OE) but outside its Operational Design Domain (ODD). This analysis applies the Systemic Theoretical Process Analysis (STPA) methodology that focuses on the interaction between MASS, Remote Operations Center (ROC), and Remote Operators (ROs) defined in the MASS code being enacted by the International Maritime Organization (IMO). The STPA modeling reveals that loss of situation awareness, information asymmetry, delayed commands, and failures in inter-system coordination are primary risk factors during degraded conditions. The study derives control actions and safety constraints to address these hazards and proposes practical safety guidelines. The results contribute to the development of riskbased operation mode and standards to ensure the safe navigation of MASS even in degraded stats.
Keywords: STPA, Mass, Degradation state, Ship operation, Remote operation, Remote operator
Received: 28 Mar 2025; Accepted: 24 Jun 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 PARK and Kim. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence: JeongMin Kim, Korea Institute of Maritime and Fisheries Technology (KIMFT), Busan, Republic of Korea
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