Federico Trigos teams up with international researchers on a project that is funded by the Royal Academy of Engineering and Lloyd's Register Foundation in the UK

By JOSÉ ÁNGEL DE LA PAZ | EGADE BUSINESS SCHOOL

Federico Trigos, a Professor at EGADE Business School - Tecnológico de Monterrey is working on an international research project to collect, analyze and disseminate data to contribute to solving the environmental and occupational health problems of dismantling ships and offshore structures.

The initiative recently received funding from the  Engineering X program, promoted by the Royal Academy of Engineering and Lloyd's Register Foundation in the UK.

The team of researchers is led by Fraser Sturt, a Professor at the University of Southampton (United Kingdom), and also includes experts from Advisian (United Kingdom), the University of Teramo (Italy) and NGO Shipbreaking Platform (Belgium).

Trigos explained that the project addresses the complex social, environmental and engineering challenges posed by the growing number of ships and offshore platforms that reach the end of their useful lives and must be dismantled.

The International Labour Organization has classified shipbreaking as one of the most dangerous occupations in existence, “with unacceptably high levels of fatalities, injuries and work-related disease.”

"Quantifying the scale and nature of the challenge is far from easy," Trigos stated.

Therefore, the project starts from the premise that for informed decisions to be made, relevant data must be publicly available and people must be aware of it.

Thus, Trigos explained, the team’s main objective is to develop an open access, dynamic and graphical web-dashboard with associated evidential material and reports on a wide range of information, including the number, age and location of offshore structures and ships globally, the materials they contain, their legislative contexts and who has ownership and other responsibilities.

"By offering this space, where the interested public can examine data, discuss approaches and find results, faster and more effective changes are made possible," said the EGADE Business School Professor.

The project is called Establishing a global baseline and raising awareness to help deliver safety improvements and should be finished in 2023. It is one of the six initiatives that received together grants from Engineering X’s of nearly £1 million for Safer decommissioning of ships and offshore structures.

As far as background in the field is concerned, Trigos previously participated in the research project Environmental and social consequences of decommissioning offshore infrastructure, which received funding from the Worldwide Universities Network in 2018.