EFFECTIVENESS OF PORT STATE CONTROL INSPECTIONS WITHIN THE FRAMEWORK OF THE MEDITERRANEAN MEMORANDUM OF UNDERSTANDING

During the end of the last century, marine accidents triggered the maritime community to apply and develop the international regulations for safety and environmental protection. Consequently, Port State Control (PSC) regulations were introduced as a new mechanism to enforce the implementation of such regulations. The main target for PSC is to exclude the substandard ships from the seaborne fleet, ensure ships safety and reliability in clean seas. The PSC programmes have been regarded as the main measure to improve maritime safety level, and the methods for selecting ships for inspection are a necessary part of the PSC programmes due to their effectiveness. This research assesses the methods adopted by the USCG, the Paris MOU, and the Med MOU as three representatives of the different regional memorandums. Data on the PSC inspection records (annually, from 2007-2017) were collected and analyzed. Quantitative analyses will be concerned with the collection and analysis of data in numeric form and are intended to emphasize the relatively large scale and representative sets of data. On the other hand, qualitative analyses will be concerned with collecting and analyzing information in as many forms.