The Maritime Risk and Safety Group (MARS)
at Dalhousie University

MARS was founded in 2018 as a joint effort by Prof. Dr. Floris Goerlandt and Prof. Dr. Ronald Pelot. The group’s scientific activities are situated within risk and safety research, with applications focusing on maritime shipping and other maritime activities. These primarily concern risks with high societal relevance in a Canadian context. Examples concern risks related to Arctic shipping, risks associated with natural hazards affecting maritime transportation networks, and risks associated with fisheries in Atlantic Canada.

Most of the work combines a fundamental understanding of safety principles with mathematical modelling and analysis approaches to understand maritime safety and analyze risks. Some work is also dedicated to the development of decision support tools to mitigate consequences of maritime risks. Furthermore, research is also directed to selected aspects of organizational risk and safety management in maritime organizations, and to aspects of maritime risk governance.

This approach is adopted to maximally ensure practical relevance of the technical and scientific work, by placing it in organizational and governance contexts. To facilitate this interdisciplinary research scope, a significant share of the research is jointly executed with a wide network of national and international collaborators.

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