Alternative evacuation procedures and smart devices' impact assessment for large passenger vessels under severe weather conditions

Within the expansive domain of maritime safety, optimizing evacuation procedures stands as a critical endeavour. After all, evacuation is literally the last and fundamental safety level afforded to mariners and passengers. Recent incidents have rekindled interest in assessing the performance of this ultimate safety barrier. However, addressing evacuability requires a holistic approach. The authors present herein the setup, simulation, and ultimately evaluation of a novel approach and its ability to rigorously assess multiple innovative risk-control options in a challenging, realistic setting. Moreover, its benchmarking against conventional regulation-dictated evacuation processes is captured distinctively along with the relative effectiveness of each proposed measure. Such measures include smart technologies and procedural changes that can result in substantial improvements to the current procedures. These will impact the ongoing discourse on maritime safety by providing insights for policymakers, vessel operators, emergency planners, etc., and emphasize the need for further research and development efforts to fortify the industry against evolving safety challenges

Machine learning and case-based reasoning for real-time onboard prediction of the survivability of ships

The subject of damaged stability has greatly profited from the development of new tools and techniques in recent history. Specifically, the increased computational power and the probabilistic approach have transformed the subject, increasing accuracy and fidelity, hence allowing for a universal application and the inclusion of the most probable scenarios. Currently, all ships are evaluated for their stability and are expected to survive the dangers they will most likely face. However, further advancements in simulations have made it possible to further increase the fidelity and accuracy of simulated casualties. Multiple time domain and, to a lesser extent, Computational Fluid dynamins (CFD) solutions have been suggested as the next “evolutionary” step for damage stability. However, while those techniques are demonstrably more accurate, the computational power to utilize them for the task of probabilistic evaluation is not there yet. In this paper, the authors present a novel approach that aims to serve as a stopgap measure for introducing the time domain simulations in the existing framework. Specifically, the methodology presented serves the purpose of a fast decision support tool which is able to provide information regarding the ongoing casualty utilizing prior knowledge gained from simulations. This work was needed and developed for the purposes of the EU-funded project SafePASS

SafePASS - Transforming marine accident response

The evacuation of a ship is the last line of defence against human loses in case of emergencies in extreme fire and flooding casualties. Since the establishment of the International Maritime Organisation (IMO), Maritime Safety is its cornerstone with the Safety of Life at Sea Convention (SOLAS) spearheading its relentless efforts to reduce risks to human life at sea. However, the times are changing. On one hand, we have the new opportunities created with the vast technological advances of today. On the other, we are facing new challenges, with the ever-increasing size of the passenger ships and the societal pressure for a continuous improvement of maritime safety. In this respect, the EU-funded Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme project SafePASS, presented herein, aims to radically redefine the evacuation processes, the involved systems and equipment and challenge the international regulations for large passenger ships, in all environments, hazards and weather conditions, independently of the demographic factors. The project consortium, which brings together 15 European partners from industry, academia and classification societies. The SafePASS vision and plan for a safer, faster and smarter ship evacuation involves: i) a holistic and seamless approach to evacuation, addressing all states from alarm to rescue, including the design of the next generation of life-saving appliances and; ii) the integration of ‘smart’ technology and Augmented Reality (AR) applications to provide individual guidance to passengers, regardless of their demographic characteristics or hazard (flooding or fire), towards the optimal route of escape

SafePASS : a new chapter for passenger ship evacuation and marine emergency response

Despite the current high level of safety and the efforts to make passenger ships resilient to most fire and flooding scenarios, there are still gaps and challenges in the marine emergency response and ship evacuation processes. Those challenges arise from the fact that both processes are complex, multi-variable problems that rely on parameters involving not only people and technology but also procedural and managerial issues. SafePASS Project, funded under EU's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme, is set to radically redefine the evacuation processes by introducing new equipment, expanding the capabilities of legacy systems on-board, proposing new Life-Saving Appliances and ship layouts, and challenging the current international regulations, hence reducing the uncertainty, and increasing the efficiency in all the stages of ship evacuation and abandonment process

SafePASS Project : A Risk Modelling Tool for Passenger Ship Evacuation and Emergency Response Decision Support

One of the biggest challenges in the field of maritime safety is the integration of all the systems related to the evacuation and emergency response under one Decision Support Tool that could broadly cover all the emergency cases and assist in the co-ordination of the evacuation process. Besides, for a decision support tool to be useful we need to be able to calculate the Available time to Evacuate based on real-time data, such as the passenger distribution on board and of course based on the various sensor data that will monitor the damage and its propagation. For all the above, the risk modelling tool developed in SafePASS H2020 project is able to estimate the potential fatalities both in the design phase and in real-time, assessing the evacuation and abandonment risk dynamically, based on real-time data related to the passenger distribution, route, semantics, LSA availability, procedural changes, and damage case (fire or flooding) propagation

The development and demonstration of an enhanced risk model for the evacuation process of large passenger vessels

Evacuating a large and complex environment, such as a large passenger vessel, either cruise or RoPax, is a safety-critical task that involves thousands of people in motion and a complex decision-making process. Despite the significant enhancement of maritime safety over the years, various hazards still pose threats to passengers and crew. To deal with this reality, the SafePASS project radically redefines the evacuation process by introducing novel technological solutions. In this context, this paper presents, in detail, an enhanced risk model for the ship evacuation process in order to facilitate the understanding of the actual risks of the process in fire and flooding accidents, and to assess various risk control measures and options toward risk mitigation. The risk model covers the entire event sequence in emergency cases on board, until the survival at sea phase, and it is constructed in two levels, following a combination of event tree analysis and Bayesian networks. Results show the risk corresponds to baseline scenarios for each accident case, which are also verified by relevant IMO and EMSA studies, and an example case of risk control option (RCO) is introduced to the model to demonstrate its ability to assess RCO’s efficiency in terms of risk reduction

The development and demonstration of an enhanced risk model for the evacuation process of large passenger vessels

Evacuating a large and complex environment, such as a large passenger vessel, either cruise or RoPax, is a safety-critical task that involves thousands of people in motion and a complex decision-making process. Despite the significant enhancement of maritime safety over the years, various hazards still pose threats to passengers and crew. To deal with this reality, the SafePASS project radically redefines the evacuation process by introducing novel technological solutions. In this context, this paper presents, in detail, an enhanced risk model for the ship evacuation process in order to facilitate the understanding of the actual risks of the process in fire and flooding accidents, and to assess various risk control measures and options toward risk mitigation. The risk model covers the entire event sequence in emergency cases on board, until the survival at sea phase, and it is constructed in two levels, following a combination of event tree analysis and Bayesian networks. Results show the risk corresponds to baseline scenarios for each accident case, which are also verified by relevant IMO and EMSA studies, and an example case of risk control option (RCO) is introduced to the model to demonstrate its ability to assess RCO’s efficiency in terms of risk reduction

Ship evacuation and emergency response trends

Accidents such as the Costa Concordia and more recently the Viking Sky incident cause a societal pressure for improving safety and emergency response in passenger ships. Finding realistic solutions for improvement requires first and foremost an understanding of the current regulatory landscape and the corresponding performance assessment standards. The first part of this paper is dedicated the provision of a comprehensive outline of the regulatory framework that will ensure compliance of any new system and model developed. The second part is dedicated on the state-of-art projects and novel ideas on ship evacuation analyses, Life Saving Appliances (LSAs), Search and Rescue (SAR) with the purpose of unveiling areas for improvement. Finally, having identified the gaps in the aforementioned topics, suggestions are made on how future work can address the challenges of marine accident response

Modern trends in ship evacuation

Accidents such as the Costa Concordia and more recently the Viking Sky incident cause a societal pressure for improving safety and emergency response in passenger ships. Finding realistic solutions for improvement requires first and foremost an understanding of the current regulatory landscape and the corresponding performance assessment standards. The first part of this paper is dedicated to the provision of a comprehensive outline of the regulatory framework that will ensure compliance of any new system and model developed. The second part is dedicated on the state-of-art projects and novel ideas on ship evacuation analyses and Life Saving Appliances (LSAs) for the purpose of unveiling areas for improvement. Finally, having identified the gaps in the aforementioned topics, suggestions are made on how future work can address the challenges of marine accident response

Concept design considerations for the next generation of mega-ships

The cruise industry represents one of the fastest growing shipping industries, supported by a 62% demand increase for the last decade, and an order-book in excess of $25bn. The sustained growth in demand is complemented by increasing vessel size, which represent investments in the order of billions. Megaships serve a specific market segment, with capacities in excess of 6,000 guests and crew. Increased capacities though lead to an increasing number of people at risk, hence safety considerations are key to these developments. By considering the current trends of the industry, a techno-economic feasibility for a 12,000 passenger mega-liner, with a significantly increased safety level, is investigated. The increased size of the cruise ship enables enhanced on-board guest experience, whilst ensuring an unparalleled safety level