USCG Initiates Risk Assessment of U.S. Ports

The USCG has launched a series of risk assessment meetings at ports around the nation to evaluate navigational safety problems in individual ports, and to determine whether additional safety measures are necessary. These measures might include additional aids to navigaion, traffic separation schemes, regulate navigation areas, enhanced communications or AIS-based vessel traffic service systems, such as that being tested in New Orleans. The first assessment was held in the ports of Mobile and Pascagoula in early August. Other ports slated for assessment include Corpus Christi and Port Arthur, Texas; Charleston, S.C.; Honolulu, Hawaii; San Juan, P.R.; Houston and San Francisco. The USCG is using a process which brings local stakeholders together in facilitated sessions to identify potential navigational safety problems and "safety interventions."