Reliability analysis of the IMO regulation – safe return to port

Abstract

The Safe Return to Port (SRtP) regulation requires physically separated redundancy for passenger ships to ensure the safe return of the ship after a casualty. Although complying with this regulation significantly increases shipbuilding time and cost, the quantitative effect of this regulation on system reliability is not well known. The main objective of this article is to investigate the SRtP regulation by reliability analysis methods and show the effect of this regulation through case studies. This article suggests reliability analysis methods for two different modes of ship system operation; continuous mode of operation and low-demand mode of operation. Location fault tree and a Markov model are suggested, respectively. Two case studies focusing on fire and flooding for each mode of operation demonstrate that applying the SRtP regulation increases the system reliability substantially.