Ballast Water Management Decision Support System Model Application - Global Maritime Transport and Ballast Water Management: Issues and Solutions - page 266

The vessel deviation and/or slowing down requirements cause a delay and this
is addressed by the BWM Convention. Article 12 - Undue delay to Ships does not
actually refer directly to Regulation B-4.2 (i.e., BWEA), but to Articles 7.2, 8, 9 or
10 and through these to additional measures, surveys, certifi cation and inspections.
The “additional measures” could be implicitly related to a BWEA, because it is
expected that a BWEA will not only be designated, because even when designated,
ships may use it. With this, BWEA needs to be regulated with the BWEA specifi c
BWM requirements (i.e., selective requirements). However, it remains unclear
whether the deviation of a vessel requested by a port State to use a BWEA will be
considered as an additional measure. Actually, Regulation B-4.3 prevents a ves-
sel's deviation and delay, however this is clearly and solely related to Regulation
B-4.1, i.e., not applying to BWEA, which is under Regulation B-4.2. This implies that
vessels may be deviated and slowed down to conduct BWE in a designated
BWEA. As a result there is no direct reference between BWEA and the BWM
Convention's defi nition of “undue delay”. The undue delay is partially addressed
in Article 2.3, which indicates that when port States consider taking a decision to
request the deviation of a vessel they should take into account the costs associated
with this requirement. In cases when the costs are low relative to the risks posed a
delay should not be understood to be undue. Therefore, the undue delay needs to
be reasonably assigned on a case-by-case basis relative to the balance of the impact
of the measures requested and the risk posed.
The BWM DSS as outlined in detail in the chapter “ Ballast Water Management
Decision Support System ” facilitates such a selective decision making process
regarding BWM measures according to the level of risk posed, as well as to avail-
able and feasible BWM options. The application of the selective BWM approach
supported by the BWM DSS is elaborated in detail hereafter, and the results are
compared with the results when the blanket approach would be applied.

Application of the Ballast Water Management Decision
Support System Model for the Port of Koper

Ballast Water Management Requirements Under the Decision
Support System Model

The BWM measures are selected based on the risk posed by the ballast water
intended for discharge. The main BWM measures are:

- ballast water reporting;

- request the vessel to conduct BWM;

- request the vessel to conduct BWE on its intended route;

- request the vessel to conduct BWE when crossing the BWEA on its intended route;

- request the vessel to deviate into the BWEA to conduct BWE;

- request the vessel to slow down to complete BWE in the BWEA;

- request the vessel not to discharge unmanaged ballast water.