Maritime Safety in a Developing Country, Bangladesh: Where We Are and the Way Forward

Bangladesh is a developing country which is well-known as a land of rivers. The inland water transport allows quite easy access to certain zones of the country where it is not comfortable to travel through land transports i.e. roads and railways. In spite of being one of the most popular public transport modes, there remain substantial deficiencies concerning maritime safety. This study analyzes the maritime accidents of Bangladesh during 2005 to 2017. The accident data have been collected from the Department of Shipping of Bangladesh. Analysis of data reveals that the major accident type in Bangladesh is collision by the vessels. Moreover, a significant portion of casualty by overall maritime accidents is also caused due to collision. Cargo vessels and passenger vessels are found to be predominantly involved in the accidents. Furthermore, the most vulnerable route for the occurrence of collision accidents is found to be the Dhaka to Barisal route. The analysis also reveals that accidents mostly occur during fair weather and poor visibility condition. Besides, the temporal distribution of accidents suggests that most of the accidents occur during night, although, the death toll is significantly higher during daytime. Most remarkably, the accidents involving foundering of vessels after collision stands for almost 95% of overall fatalities. Scarcity of standard data is the major limitation of this study that signifies poor accident reporting system of the country. Finally, several policy implications are suggested for effective mitigation of collision accidents to improve overall maritime safety of Bangladesh.

• Record URL:
  https://annualmeeting.mytrb.org/OnlineProgram/Details/15500
• Supplemental Notes:
  • This paper was sponsored by TRB committee AW040 Standing Committee on Marine Safety and Human Factors.
• Corporate Authors:

  Transportation Research Board

  ,    
• Authors:
  • Uddin, Md. Imran
  • Raihan, Md Asif
  • Awal, Zobair Ibn
• Conference:
  • Transportation Research Board 100th Annual Meeting
  • Location: Washington DC, United States
  • Date: 2021-1-5 to 2021-1-29
• Date: 2021

Language

• English

Media Info

• Media Type: Digital/other
• Features: Figures; Maps; References;
• Pagination: 16p

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Cargo ships; Crash analysis; Crash data; Inland water transportation; Maritime safety; Passenger ships; Water transportation crashes
• Geographic Terms: Bangladesh
• Subject Areas: Marine Transportation; Safety and Human Factors;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01763660
• Record Type: Publication
• Report/Paper Numbers: TRBAM-21-02945
• Files: TRIS, TRB, ATRI
• Created Date: Feb 4 2021 10:57AM