 Some opening words... On behalf of the LOC of the Seventh International Ship Stability Workshop, we warmly welcome all the participants of the workshop to Shanghai. Ship has been a powerful tool for marine transportation in the human history. With the global development of economics, the amount of marine transportation around the world is even increasing now.
Among the various technical aspects in naval architecture, from an academic viewpoint, ship stability possesses its own unique and essential importance. I hope the present Workshop will provide a forum for a clear overview and deep discussions on the recent research progress in this aspect... The proceedings of that conference have been grouped in seven big sessions.
The first session mostly deals with the theoretical development in damage stability of the vessel, while the second session is dedicated to the damage survivability of stability. The next sessions cover the assessment of ship stability safety, some matters of the theoretical prediction if ship's intact stability, experimental investigation of intact stability, and the research on the ship dynamics with the water collected on decks and extreme waves. In addition to that, a separate session deals with the stability research in China.
 The International Workshops on Ship Stability are organized every year between the Stability Conferences STAB. They are guided by the International Standing Committee. This was the sixth Workshop in the series, after the Workshops in Glasgow, UK (1995), Osaka, Japan (1996), Hersonissos, Greece (1997), St. John's, Canada (1998) and Trieste, Italy (2001). The Workshop is, essentially, an invitation based scientific event.
It gathers those researchers and practitioners who are actively involved in stability subjects. It is the forum for in-depth discussion of all problems in the field of stability safety. This includes theoretical models, design intact stability, safety standards, operational elements of safety, damage stability, and regulatory aspects for all types of ships. The 6th International Ship Stability Workshop was hosted by Webb Institute in Glen Cove. New York. The program was coordinated by the Workshop Organizing Committee and the Session Organizers, while the organizational and administrative matters were in the hands of the Webb Local Committee.
The program of the sessions is listed in the Technical Program and the overall time table of the Workshop is presented in the Schedule. The papers presented here are grouped into sessions, as they were presented in the Workshop. The summary of the discussion during each session is presented as well.
 Here is the official document containing the proceedings of the Seventeenth Conference of the IALA-AISM held in Cape Town in 2010. Among the topics covered in the course of the conference there were virtual aids to navigation, portable pilot units, navigating eLoran, intelligent info systems for electronic navigation, new tech radars, application of 3D simulation system to the navigation aids, development of the four-season lighted buoy, recapitalization of the GPS network, Under Keel Management System etc.
Let us start with the article covering the virtual aid to navigation presented by Michael Skov from DaMSA (i.e. Danish Maritime Safety Authority). Virtual AIS as an aim to navigation shall not be considered as just another tool and shall be utilized successfully in numerous cases as by itself or together with other tools - for example, in cases of marking of fairways in some areas. DaMSA uses the data from AIS for numerous purposes and this presentation is intended to provide some examples.
It will mostly be focusing on the advantages and disadvantages of virtual aids to navigation - the text is supplemented with informative illustrations showing some of their benefits and also examples of the operational use of these tools in Danish waters...
 The content of the present report is based on the contributions provided by the several authors representing the most respected entities in the world of the international maritime shipping industry. It should be looked at as a result of the perfect collaboration. Numerous experts validated the original version of the report and, after that, the document was validated.
The document is aimed at the policy makers and other industry stakeholders, researchers and technology developers, and many other players. In fact, it could be treated as a sort of the starting point when discussing the future of the shipbuilding as it facilitates the cooperation of the parties involved. Note that the main emphasis has been put by the authors on the Baltic Sea region.
They have provided an excellent source of information about the current situation as well as the historical background and, of course, the future perspectives of the shipbuilding industry in the subject region. the document shall be read by the people willing to be kept updated in the recent developments and ongoing trends in the field of the shipbuilding and is intended to be useful to the professional shipbuilders and others engaged in the field.
 The publication contains the proceedings of the Seventh Conference on Robotic Sailing which was held in 2014; the volume includes numerous interesting works presented by the researchers from all around the world relating to both future and current challenges in the development of the various autonomous sailboats.
The autonomous sailing robots are the boats that only use the wind force for propelling with neither any actual human assistance nor any sort of remote control. The type of sailing in question offers the great potential of long-term and range autonomous solar, wind- and wave-propelled devices that are also carbon neutral. Such devices would greatly contribute to the monitoring of various important data, for example ecological, hydrographic, environmental conditions and other. Moreover, such robots could also be utilized for monitoring the traffic, assistance, surveillance, security plus rescue purposes.
However, they are still very dependent on the wind and sea conditions that are subject to the rapid change, and this is what in fact presents a serious challenge for the route planning, control of stability and avoidance of possible collisions. We recommend to treat the book as a definitely interesting and also quite informative publication for every robotic sailing enthusiast willing to be kept updated with the very latest technological developments and advances in the subject field.
 Another conference, this one dedicated to the Marine Renewable & Offshore Wind Energy - RINA International Conference - 2010. The opening document of the papers included in the set discusses the modern situation with the offshore wind development. It it critically important to underline that the experience could easily get transferred from the more mature offshore industries like oil and gas industry.
The team of authors of this article argued that the today's challenges and opportunities involved are multi-faceted and it would imply a serious need for the multi-disciplinary approach for proper assessment of the risks as well as optimization of the returns. The VCA, i.e. Value Chain Assessment is introduced, an the most adequate methodologies for optimization of the balance between risks and returns. Last couple of decades have demonstrated quite significant increase in the potential/implementation of the developmental and research projects relating to the wind energy.
The demand for subject type of renewable energy made the participants of the industry to look for new resources offshore. Subject trends have resulted in the implementation of the new technologies in cases where a relatively limited of experience data s possessed... Recommended for people willing to be updated with all recent developments in the industry...
 All articles of the International Conference, RINA. One of the ways how the human element makes an impact on a large scale is through inclusion of ergonomic requirements in the Rules published by Classification Societies. This can usually be achieved by either introducing these specific requirements into the Classification Rules or by making the existing Rule requirements with human element implications more explicit.
However, surveyors who assure Rule compliance, often have quite poor or even no any knowledge of the human element... The present pack contains numerous papers presented during the International Conference held in 2011. It starts with the paper describing the human element competency that is required for design appraisal, followed by the documents covering the human factor role in the investigation of marine casualties, human factor design, extended simulation runs and performance of seamen, noise effect on human performance, performance and fatigue issues in bridge and ECR watchkeeping, perception of risk, mapping of work areas, habitability assessment, shock mitigation seat test/evaluation, marine ergonomic design enhancement though digital human modeling, crew innovation on board short-sea vessels etc.
 This is a nice compilation of the proceedings of the papers that have been presented in the course of the Third ISSW and summary of discussions. One of the main objectives of that event was to promote the maximum possible exchange of technical information directly related to the research and developments in ship stability as well as operational safety.
This may be achieved through the in-depth discussions by the world respected experts. The first of the papers provides a sort of intro to the numerical modeling of the vessel motions and usage of such models in the analysis of the ship's intact stability. The author of the article has presented a good discussion of various important and actual aspects that shall form a part of the whole process of modeling, namely the ship system, environment, excitation and response, supplemented with a very brief overview of the techniques used for modeling of the hydrodynamic forces.
The main emphasis has been put on quality assurance and validation of various numerical modeling techniques. Among the topics that have been covered during that workshop there were application of various non-linear systems dynamics to vessel stability, numerical/physical modeling of intact/damage stability, some special ship stability problems etc.
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