Special Sessions at SNAME Annual Meeting

Following on from the success of the special panel sessions at the 2008 Annual Meeting held in Houston, Texas, SNAME will have an expanded Special Panel program at its 2009 Annual Meeting.

The SNAME Annual Meeting which will take place from 21-23 of October in Providence, Rhode Island, will feature four Special Panel Sessions.  Each of these sessions are intended to examine the broad technical and policy issues in a particular area of emerging interest to SNAME members and to a wide audience of others who have interest in maritime issues. The four Special panel Sessions are:

Electric Ships – A Shipbuilders Perspective
•    Chairs: Bob Keane, Chair of Ship Design Committee, T&R and Captain Norbert Doerry , NavSea
•    Following on from the successful Electric Ship Design Symposium held in Early 2009, this panel session will focus on the electric ship construction experience of three large shipbuilders. Shipbuilders from the US, Europe and Asia will present papers and discuss the challenges they faced and solutions they found.

Ocean Energy – How do we develop it?
•     Chair: David Gray, The Glosten Associates
•    Recently we have seen an upsurge in interest in all types of ocean energy: - windmills, tidal current energy extractors, wave generators, etc.  Naval architects, marine and ocean engineers are the professionals best equipped to bring these projects forward in a safe and efficient manner
•    Many issues have to be solved including technical issues relating to the design, construction, installation and operation of offshore structures and power transmission and/or storage; regulatory issues concerning location of offshore energy plant; and environmental issues relating to interaction between ocean energy plant and the physical and biological environment.

Unmanned and Autonomous Ships
•    Chair: Christer Broman, ConocoPhillips
•    As we continue to expand our ocean horizons there are tremendous opportunities for the application of robotics, in and on the sea.  Both remote-piloted and autonomous vehicles are already deployed to carry out a range of tasks and new vehicles and new capabilities are developing at a fast pace.
•    The possibility of unmanned ships for ocean transport and other duties both naval and commercial is seen as a possibility and something worth exploring although many technical and non-technical hurdles remain to be crossed.

Efficient Shipping in the Greenhouse Gas Era
•    Chair: Keith Michel, President of SNAME
•    Increasing concern with global climate change and greenhouse gas emissions is bringing new focus from both a policy and technology perspective on ship and shipping efficiency.  This session will have a paper authored by a former ASME Congressional Fellow on the policy aspects of this issue, a paper by a senior IMO representative on how that body views the GHG issue and a paper looking at how technology may be used to address the problem.

Each of these panels will have a two hours slot in the program for the presentation of three technical papers and a 30 minute panel discussion period.  The Technical Program for the SNAME Annual Meeting will begin on Thursday October 21 with two parallel Special Panel Sessions and will finish on Friday October 22 with the remaining two Special panel Sessions.

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