Student teams from seven maritime universities have submitted proposals for the designcompetition for Safe Affordable Ferries sponsored by the Worldwide Ferry Safety Association (WFSA).
A panel of six judges will review the submissions and will announce the winners by early Fall 2013. The top prize is $5,000 with second and third prizes also to be awarded.
The student teams were from (by alphabetic order), Istanbul Technical University, Maine MaritimeAcademy, National Technical University of Athens, Tolani Maritime Institute, India, University of Applied Sciences in Bremen, University of British Columbia and Webb Institute in New York. Dr. Roberta Weisbrod, a Board member of WFSA, explained, “The purpose of the design competition is to supplement efforts by affected national governments, Interferry and the International Maritime Organization to reduce ferry fatalities in developing world ferry travel.” She added, “This competition addresses the most intractable cause of ferry fatalities, the quality of the vessel with the goal of eliciting innovative design at the same time promoting the fact that as developing countries become emerging markets their need and ability to pay for innovative affordable safe design increases.”
The student teams were asked to submit a design for a 500‐passenger ferry for Bangladesh as specified by the Shipping Department for the 250‐kilometer route between Dhaka, the capital, south to Barisal (the “Venice of the East”) via Chandpur (where three major rivers come together). The river route, where the depth varies between 2.5 m to 3.9 m, is subject to fierce storms.