Seismic analysis of aircraft accidents

Seismic records from Finnish and Swedish stations were analyzed for a study of two aircraft accidents in Finland and Sweden. A Hornet F-18 fighter crashed in central Finland, and analysis of recorded impact signals from 7 nearby seismic stations yielded in a crash location only 4 km in error. An estimated magnitude (ML) of 0.5 units gave an impact velocity of 335 m/sec (1200 km/h), which was in excellent agreement with that reported by the Finnish Air Force. A Norwegian Hercules transport plane crashed in foul weather near the summit of Mt. Kebnekaise, NW Sweden. Both seismic and infrasound signals were weak, and in our interpretation, this implied that the Hercules aircraft had a less steep impact angle against the mountain. We also examined seismic analyses of other spectacular air accidents like that of Lockerbie, UK in 1988, and terrorist aircraft attacks on September 11th, 2001 in the USA. Likewise, accidents at sea, such as the sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk in the Barents sea in 2000, and the freighter M/S Rocknes near Bergen in 2004, were recorded and analyzed seismically. In this study, we demonstrated that it was feasible to use seismic registrations to locate impact sites, and to define the exact time of such accidents. Also, negative evidence, i.e., lack of seismic recordings, may provide some information of such accidents and their consequences.

Research Review on Marine Search and Rescue

Locating the marine target in a quick and precise way is the crucial point of implementing SAR （search and rescue） at sea, which involves aspects of developing SAR strategy and detects the marine targets. As the effect of marine target detection restricts the SAR result directly, the study has focused on reviewing the previous research about marine target detection, especially dim marine target detection. What＇s more, small target detection under complex sea status is one of the severe challenges which is research＇s hotspot and needs more endeavor. Current research results and future research directions are discussed in the paper. The findings can provide systematic view of implementing maritime search and rescue for field researchers and governors.

The cause of human fatigue and scenario analysisin the process of marine transportation

The framework of fatigue factors is constructed to reduce the number of maritime accidents caused by human fatigue.Based on the study of maritime human fatigue,by screening and classifying it,there are 15 fatigue factors,which can be classified into 4 types:sleep,rest and rhythm;work factors;personal conditions;environmental factors.These factors are regarded as the variables for constructing scenarios.The importance,uncertainty,influence and dependence of variables and variable pairs were assessed by using morphological analysis,quantitative scales and correlation matrices.Ship movement and workload are selected as the two key variables,which are regarded as the axes of generating scenarios.One of the scenarios is selected as the typical scenario to illustrate the relationship between the causes of fatigue.Then,the analysis framework is constructed according to the fatigue factors relationship,and several potential solutions are proposed,which include the development of foresighted and flexible work plans,and the application of wearable facilities to improve monitoring and assessment systems.The proposed framework lays a theoretical foundation for studying maritime human fatigue,and scenario analysis can provide an effective strategy for reducing crews'fatigue.

Zero-Inflated Exponential Distribution of Casualty Rate in Ship Collision

There are two weaknesses in current researches into human casualty of ship collision.One is that the range of injuries or fatalities is restricted to the maximum number of casualties in a particular sample,which may not cover all the possible numbers of casualties in the future.International Maritime Organization(IMO)employed the injured or dead percentage of all the persons on board to represent casualties,but it only provided several discrete values to quantify human losses in different scenarios.The other is that the assumption that the distributions of the injuries or fatalities follow certain distribution,such as negative binomial and Poisson distributions is left to be statistically tested.Firstly,this study considers casualty rate,including injury and fatality rates,as random variables;the interval of the variables are from 0 to 1.Then,the distributions of the variables are investigated using historical data.From historical data,we can find that there are many zeros.Zeroinflated models are proved to be effective in processing data with inflated zeros.Furthermore,the probability density of the variables decreases rapidly as the casualty rate becomes larger.Thus,zero-inflated exponential distribution is assumed to fit the data.The parameters of zero-inflated exponential distribution are calibrated by maximum likelihood estimation(MLE)method.Finally,the assumption is tested by chi-square test.The zeroinflated exponential distribution can be used to generate human losses as a part of consequences in the simulation of ship collision risk.