Maritime Security and Risk Assessments—2nd Edition: From Risk Identification to Decision Support and System Resilience

Maritime safety and security are increasingly shaped by dense traffic, digitised navigation, automation, cyber-physical dependencies, decarbonisation and geopolitical conflict. Deliberate attacks on civilian shipping compound the difficulty of protecting crews and assisting disabled vessels carrying hazardous cargoes in contested waters. Building on the first edition’s focus on AIS-enabled surveillance, anomaly detection, collision-risk assessment and maritime domain awareness, this second edition examines the progression from risk identification to risk-informed decision-making, validation, and system resilience. Its twelve contributions represent three research streams: (i) regional collision-risk sensing, route planning, COLREG-compliant decision-making and autonomous-system validation; (ii) human–technology interaction and data-driven accident causation; and (iii) ship safety, port resilience and maritime spatial planning. The studies convert traffic data, simulations, accident reports, and expert knowledge into evidence to support operational decisions, while revealing common limitations: limited external and prospective validation, incomplete causal identification, sparse or imbalanced data, simplified simulation assumptions, and weak integration across ship, traffic area, port and network scales. Credible implementation of these results will require trustworthy data, explicit treatment of uncertainty, human-centred assurance, interoperable validation environments, and pre-planned response and recovery arrangements for cyber-physical failures, armed attacks, and casualties caused by alternative fuels.