Operational safety is a significant challenge in the ports and terminals industry, and this has been affected by the growth in recent of years of various sectors, which in turn has been accelerated by pressure from public and private stakeholders.
An example where this has been particularly true is the cruise market, where terminals have come under pressure to receive ever greater numbers of vessels for both economic and publicity reasons.
This situation has led to operate these larger vessels in already existing infrastructures, generally designed for smaller ships or even for other types of traffic, where the demanding mooring conditions imposed by these large ships has proven to be insufficient.