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.

Just in Time (JIT) arrival, as an operational measure towards shipping decarbonisation, promises increased energy savings and reduced emissions. Integrated digital systems targeting the optimisation of the port call process allow vessels to adapt their speed to avoid the “hurry-up-and-wait” syndrome, and thus, reduce their fuel consumption at a certain extend. However, there are a lot of concerns and challenges ahead for a wide adoption of such a solution, that are either related to the regulatory and standardisation frameworks, or to the realisation of the actual benefits of a JIT optimisation system. Thus, this paper attempts to shed light on some of these challenges, by focusing on the maritime regulatory framework around JIT operations and on emission reduction potential from speed adaptation. Results provide a baseline for regulatory compliance evaluation for such a system, and a preliminary environmental performance assessment from JIT arrival applied on an actual ship case. These insights and early results will be further explored within the EU-funded MISSION project towards a full appreciation of the JIT concept benefits and regulatory compliance, which will lead to its wide implementation.

The maritime industry, following several conventions, regulations, and initiatives, is trying to adapt and limit its GHG and other local polluting emissions. A crucial aspect of these decarbonisation efforts is the provision of electric energy to vessels, either in port or stationed at anchorages. The latter prevents the option of receiving shore power to support their needs without operating their generators. Research and innovation efforts are attempting to fill this gap through several technology options. This study focuses on the systematic definition of the power and energy demands at anchorage to drive the design of such solutions, focusing on the materialisation of a modular and scalable power barge serving as an offshore power supply solution. Data for various ports and ship types were collected and analysed properly to extract significant insights. Results formulated baselines, per ship type and port, to be used for selecting power modules’ configurations and meeting these demands. This study, considering the lack of industry data regarding power demand, relies on existing studies, guidelines, and other literature to define power demand, which in turn introduces a great deal of uncertainty. Thus, a detailed statistical analysis was employed, together with probability modelling, in order to limit the uncertainty and provide a baseline for the power and energy demands to be verified by future studies capitalising on the accumulation of actual industry data.

Large passenger vessels, such as Cruise and RoPax vessels, can be extremely vulnerable to communicable diseases, as the COVID-19 pandemic has shown lately in addition to earlier health events related to other viruses and diseases. Thus, managing major disease outbreaks in the maritime industry constitutes a big challenge, aiming to address the significant risks arising from an uncontrolled spreading, either through risk controls for maritime operations or alternatives for ship design. To answer this challenge, this paper introduces health aspects into maritime safety assessment, considering the daily risk management from shipping companies, the IMO’s Formal Safety Assessment (FSA) and the Risk-Based Design (RBD) framework. Health risk assessment is incorporated into the framework in terms of major outbreaks, regarding both their probability of occurrence and consequences. The result is a structured and formalised procedure based on the process of IMO’s FSA, and built according to the standards of RBD. The framework, with a suitable risk metric, should be capable of assessing health-related risks and risk control options, by also considering cost-efficiency and other criteria in a holistic assessment. Future steps include the implementation of the framework into ship and spreading cases for actual establishment and adaptation to the industry needs, considering also experience and practices from the medical field.

Communicable diseases pose a significant threat for passenger vessels, as norovirus, influenza, food, waterborne diseases, and lately COVID-19 have caused several public health events. To manage the risks deriving from communicable diseases, this work focuses on ship design by developing a framework for health risk assessment. This framework is based on the risk-based design, an emerging design process for which safety is considered as a design criterion, by also integrating infection and spreading aspects. The framework shall allow the assessment of various design solutions, as risk control options, aiming at minimizing the spread of diseases and, thus, its consequences.