Passenger ship safety - science paving the way

Abstract

The prevailing regulatory framework addressing ship safety originates in some distant past and carries a heavy “baggage” of experiential determinism and rules of thumb; all throwing a smoke screen onto science and quenching most attempts to dealing with safety in a scientific, all embracing and systematic approach. Goal-Based Standards are meant to provide anew impetus to achieve this but experience so far suggests if anything even more determinism and even less science in the strife to face uncertainty and complexity with only “crumbs” of understanding of the real issues at hand. There is only one real exception, giving science the opportunity and all of us hope that scientific approaches to addressing safety will at long last be called upon to pave and lead the way: [Large] Passenger Ship Safety. Nothing is meant to be preconceived here; safety can have a field day before it is cut down to face reality and cost. Goal-Based Approaches, Casualty Threshold, Safe Haven, Safe Area, “Zero” Tolerance in human life loss, De-risked Ships; all goes and is being seriously discussed at IMO. This paper presents a critique of recent developments at IMO, in particular the new probabilistic rules of damage stability calculations, in an attempt to demonstrate the need to use knowledge in all its forms to make a difference in safety improvement before proceeding to suggesting a workable approach to address one exciting development in the regulatory front: Casualty Threshold. Emphasis is placed on explaining the framework that could embrace and support such development and on the pre-requisite scientific knowledge to realise it.