An innovative approach for the biological risk management on-board ships during COVID-19 crisis

The novel coronavirus (COVID-19), due to the limited supply of vaccines, put a strain on worldwide economy, also on the maritime sector. As a result, the adoption of non-pharmaceutical interventions to limit the biological agent's spread became fundamental. Such preventing actions can be performed in accordance with various International and National Regulations even though not specifically issued for the maritime sector. In this context, the authors introduce a new methodology for biological risk management on-board ships using a qualitative risk matrix. Moreover, with respect to the traditional approach, an importance weight scale was added, in order to classify the different on-board activities. To perform a comparative analysis between the new and the traditional approach, a case study based on a cargo ship was carried out.