Study on the protection of workers and ships in cases of abandonment and its relationship with smart ships

The focus of the problem addressed here is the abandonment of Smart ships and their crews ashore, and the transition for today's seafarers. It is carried out under a multidisciplinary concept since the abandonment of a ship has administrative, commercial, labour, technical, environmental and cybersecurity consequences. In addition, there are a variety of departments involved, such as the state administration, the workers (i.e. the crew), the ship owners, the technicians, etc. This paper aims to analyse the abandonment of a ship as we understand it today and also in the case of autonomous ships and its consequences for all parties under a legislative, doctrinal and technical analysis.

Reality is showing us that the new technologies, led by artificial intelligence, are already a reality. Thus, we can see some unmanned ships with artificial intelligence as is the case of IBN and the marine research organization Promare, which have published the first tests at sea with artificial intelligence, which functions as captain of the new MayFlower, this ship crossed the Atlantic without crew controlled by this non-human captain in 2021 and represents a new concept of ship or smart ship.