Analysis of the Maritime Inspection Regimes - Are ships over-inspected?

The lack of trust in the maritime industry between all the industry organizations and regulators has created an inspection industry which is heavily controlled by oil majors in order to limit their liability. This report is an introductory part of a PhD project called "The Econometrics of Maritime Safety – Recommendations to Enhance Safety at Sea" which is based on 183,000 port state control inspections1 and 11,700 casualties from various data sources. Its overall objective is to provide recommendations to improve safety at sea. This part identifies all inspections that are performed in the name of safety onboard vessels, their estimated costs and frequencies and brings them in relation with insurance claim costs from P&I Clubs. The probability of casualty is analyzed per frequency of inspection and detention. The results reveal that certain ships are inspected frequently and that over-inspection does not necessarily decrease the probability of having a casualty but can rather increase it.