IMO recommendations for a risk-based regulatory framework

FLARE aims on developing a novel framework for flooding risk assessment of passenger ships. FLARE is consequentially based on the achievements of previous research projects like GOALDS, EMSA III and eSAFE, all of them providing new insights in ship’s behaviour in flooding accidents as well as the development of the related risk assessment.

This workspace focusses on the development of recommendations for amending/updating IMO provisions as well as the regulatory framework. FLARE focusses on:

1. Identification and evaluation of risk control measures;
2. Suggesting improvements to current regulatory framework;
3. Development of an enhanced risk-based model for evaluating flooding accidents.

The identification of recommendable risk control measures will be performed based on the results of work package 7 considering cost-benefit assessment in accordance with Formal Safety Assessment (MSC-MEPC.2/Circ.12/Rev.2). Due to the development of a crashworthiness tool (WP3) the catalogue of risk control options could be enlarged by ship’s structural enforcement.

With respect to improvements to current regulatory framework, existing requirements and elements of the assessment process for passenger ships were compared to the state-of-the-art as provided by recent projects. Among others, this investigation delivered the following areas of improvement:

• Novel model for determining damages for the assessment, the so-called non-zonal approach;
• Introducing the probabilistic approach for grounding damage stability assessment (using the same approach for collision and grounding);
• Consider new data for passenger ship draughts;
• Consider new data for permeabilities of machinery spaces, stores, accommodation and tanks.

The new model for evaluating flooding accidents will suggest to use risk as metric in the approval process. Further, this new framework will provide an approval scheme for complete novel risk control options mitigating the risk to all person on board of passenger ships.

Here you can download the reports of this workspace: 

Public summary Deliverbale 8.1