The Royal Institution of Naval Architects (Rina) is organising an international conference on Formal Safety Assessment (FSA), which it will hold in its London headquarters on September 18 and 19.

Announcing conference details, Rina said: "FSA has become an established procedure in the drafting of new regulations at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO) and by national authorities. Recent projects have included the International Collaborative Formal Safety of Bulk Carriers, which has been partly supported by the EU and other governments. The objective of this conference is to present the findings of recent FSAs and to debate generic aspects of FSA studies."

The conference will hear a range of views from academics, consultants, shipping company representatives and government officials.

Steven Harding and John Riding of Marine and Risk Consultants will present a paper on "International collaborative safety assessment into bulk carrier safety."

Dr Toshiro Arima, research committee, Shipbuilding Research Association, Japan, will discuss "FSA study on bulk carrier safety" in his paper.

Michael Starling, BMT Reliability Consultants, UK, and Serjeg Krystanovic, Cyprus Bureau of Shipping, will present their paper on "Formal safety assessment of bulk carriers under 150m."

"Impact of URS21 on existing hatch covers of bulk carriers" will be the subject of a paper by Luis Guarin, Prof Dracos Vassalos and Dr Dimitris Konovessis, SSRC, UK.

Prof Kostas Spyrou, Prof Apostolas Papanikolaou, M Samoulides and T Louka of the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, will present a paper on "Impact of Solas chapter XII on double skin bulk carriers."

"Cost-benefit assessment of risk control options for bulk carriers" is the topic of a paper to be presented by Bengt Sangberg, ShipTech A/S, Denmark, and Erik Bastianen, MSR Consult ApS, Denmark.

Allan Gilfillan, a UK consultant, will present "Stakeholder analysis, the key to defining who pays for legislation." Several other papers are to be presented.