The present excellent collection of documents has been made of the selected papers and presentations of the  IMO-WMU Global R&D Forum relating to the Emerging BWM Systems held some years back in Sweden. Nowadays, the great demand is there within the maritime industry for the development of the environmentally-friendly and also efficient BWM systems.

Taking this demand into account, the today's technological community has been dealing with the active developing of the various BWM systems to be able to cater to the emerging market of the ballast water technology, The systems in question have to undergo various applicable approval processes including the testing as per the  established testing procedures, in compliance with the requirements of the BWM Convention plus the Guidelines. While several systems are currently under development or approval process, testing among the BWM system TF, i.e. test facilities worldwide shows the gaps in the harmonization and methodology.

This has significantly contributed to the confusion and lack of confidence among the people involved in the development of the subject systems, and also among the ship owners. Therefore, it is really imperative that the end-users of the BWM systems have enough confidence that consistent and reliable testing methodologies are applied.

This publication includes all articles presented in the course of the RINA Conference 2009 — Innovation in high Speed Marine Vessels. Best industry experts from all over the world did participate in the subject conference, reporting on the latest developments on such the important matters as fire safety for FRP composite ships, station keeping of high speed ferries, sharing experiences from construction, design and operation of CFRP sandwich vessels and boats, explaining the protection of intellectual property for the HSC industry, and many more — there are in total almost twenty documents inside.

Designers and operators of the ships have to possess the information about the limit—state responses of a ship operating in high sea conditions, and this shall preferably be done without having to resort to costly experiments. For the sake of accuracy, the structural response of the ship shall be considered. It will be demonstrated that the coupled smoother particle hydrodynamics approach can predict the FSI (i.e. fluid—structure interaction) effects during the impact of flexible cylinder on calm water — such case would be relevant to slamming of the high speed vessels' hull.

The present compendium of files contains all technical documents presented and discussed during the Seventeenth Ship & Offshore Structures Congress held in South Korea some years ago in 2009. It consists of the proceedings of eight specialist committees dealing with the damage assessment after accidental events, fabrication technology, utilization of the ocean wind-and-wave energy, floating production systems, naval ship design, sailing yacht design, condition assessment of aged ships, impulsive pressure loading and response assessment.

The second part of the volume contains eight documents corresponding to the technical committees covering the environment, the loads,  quasi-static and dynamic response, ultimate strength, fatigue, fracture, design principles and applicable criteria, design methods. As everyone may see from the above list of the topics that have been addressed during the event, the information included in this set of technical papers is very valuable and practical so we believe that it would be very beneficial to all marine industry professionals to go through all of them to get updated with the recent scientific developments and researches, especially taking into consideration that all articles have been prepared by the world recognized industry experts.

The international maritime industry of today is being challenged by so many important factors, one of them being the fall—out from the current economic crisis causing the rippling effects; we shall also take into close consideration the global warming effect with all scientific impacts involved, as well as the direction in which today's shipping industry shall move to decrease negative impact of the air emissions another factor to be considered is rising cost of energy and shortage of the manpower experienced elsewhere — of course, these factors will not disappear in the nearest future and shall therefore be paid attention.

This problem cannot be fixed immediately, and the participants of the shipping industry have to get the vessels manned with better rained and adjusted personnel having all required internship at sea. It shall be noted that safety and security, as well as the environmental credentials of shipping and whole future sustainability of the maritime industry totally depend on developing of the capable and effective manpower resources. It is quite obvious that development and training of the manpower and all other issues connected with human resources will become one of the most serious challenges faced by the industry...

Here are the proceedings of the RINA-hosted international conference held in 2008 and dedicated to the operation and design of the ships transporting liquid petroleum gas. The papers selected for this publication cover design and operation of such ships, associated environmental risks together with the compliance for operation within inland waters. response of vessels to severe underwater shocks, market update, analysis of the supply-demand balance of the world liquid petroleum gas market and opportunities opening in the age of growing supply, fatigue assessment, supervision and professional training provided to the newbuilding site teams, various structural aspects of cargo tank design/construction, studies on support arrangement of cargo tanks, reliquefaction of the LPG cargo including design and operation of plants, etc.

The high prices for LPG slow the demand growth in many markets. Indian and Chinese import levels stopped their growth. At the same time, high energy costs stimulate the oil and gas projects and this would definitely bring about higher production of the LPG. Note that production in the Middle East region is ramping up, being driven by high crude oil production and new LNG-related projects. In the future, the LPG market is expected to be much more supply-driven...

Proceedings of the RINA conference on design & operation of the bulk carriers that was held in 2009. The publication starts with the hull integrity management and covers the best established practices for maintenance of subject type of vessels, including vetting trends.

We understand that the bulk carriers live very stressful lives since they are not as robust and strong as most of the people might think, and at the same tome safe and efficient bulk carrier may only be obtained if all the ship designers and constructors, maintenance and management teams performed their duties in a proper manner.

The documents included in this compilation deal with such interesting topics as regulatory and operational challenges applicable to the bulk carriers, design and operation of bulk carriers, monitoring and maintaining ballast tank condition in vessels that are laid-up, special fatigue analysis, best practices for technical maintenance, double bottom height effect, reliability of the hull girder including challenges and possible solutions, economic and environment-friendly solutions for electric drives for the side-rolling hatch covers, predictor-corrector system for health monitoring of the structure of the hull, applicable IMO performance standards, spectral fatigue analysis etc.

Here are some fragments of the opening speech... On behalf of the Local Organizing Committee of the 9th International Stability Workshop, I warmly welcome all the participants of the workshop to Hamburg. The workshop is being organized by Germanischer Lloyd, the well known and world respected classification society, with the support of the ISC (International Standing Committee) of the International Ship Stability Conference.

Former Stability Workshops have contributed greatly to the advancement of scientific treatment of ship safety in all its forms. The main declared aim of this workshop is to promote a full exchange of ideas, techniques, methodologies and best practice by providing a ground for the maritime profession to meet and discuss the stability of vessels and ocean vehicles, seeking ways for improving maritime safety. We would also like to thank our sponsor BMVBS, the German Ministry of Transport for their support. In addition to that, we would like to thank all the presenters, authors and participants, from all continents, for their contributions to this workshop.

Though this conference itself was held nearly ten years ago, the materials that are presented in this compilation shall still be considered actual and their importance is critically high to anyone who are interested in the developments in the field of assessment and control of the ship stability.

Some opening words... On behalf of the LOC of the Seventh International Ship Stability Workshop, we warmly welcome all the participants of the workshop to Shanghai. Ship has been a powerful tool for marine transportation in the human history. With the global development of economics, the amount of marine transportation around the world is even increasing now.

Among the various technical aspects in naval architecture, from an academic viewpoint, ship stability possesses its own unique and essential importance. I hope the present Workshop will provide a forum for a clear overview and deep discussions on the recent research progress in this aspect... The proceedings of that conference have been grouped in seven big sessions.

The first session mostly deals with the theoretical development in damage stability of the vessel, while the second session is dedicated to the damage survivability of stability. The next sessions cover the assessment of ship stability safety, some matters of the theoretical prediction if ship's intact stability, experimental investigation of intact stability, and the research on the ship dynamics with the water collected on decks and extreme waves. In addition to that, a separate session deals with the stability research in China.