Real-time estimation of the Potential Loss of Life in case of ship-to-ship collisions

Abstract

The flooding risk assessment for passenger ships is a topic mainly addressed during the design phase of the vessel. However, risk pertains to the whole life cycle of a ship. In this sense, the operational phase requires methodologies for risk assessment while the vessel is sailing, thus a real-time estimation of the flooding risk. The framework developed during the EU project FLARE for the design phase allows for determining flooding risk by estimating the Potential Loss of Life. Such a metric can be extended to real-time applications thanks to the flexibility of the risk framework. The execution of direct calculations for ship-to-ship collisions and flooding simulations for vessel survivability permit the generation of fast surrogate models to determine potential damage dimensions and survivability for a specific event, thus the flooding risk. Such a process, including uncertainties due to the onboard instrumentations, is applied to two reference passenger ships: a Cruise ship and a RoPax. Simulations of four scenarios considering different weather conditions show the real-time variations of the flooding risk (through the Potential Loss of Life) following collision with a target vessel, thus demonstrating the applicability of the process in real time.