FLOODSTAND

Integrated Flooding Control and Standard for Stability and Crises Management

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'The size of new passenger ships is continuously increasing. Bigger size offers bigger opportunities and economics of scale, but when a bigger ship accommodates more passengers there may be a higher risk, if evacuation is needed. Thus, new approaches have to be used and further developed in order to have the flooding under control if the watertight integrity of the ship is lost. In the worst case, all flooding accidents may lead to the capsizing or sinking of the ship within a highly variable time frame.

The need to ensure safe return to port or at least sufficient time for abandonment, will form major challenge in ship design. However, the assessment of the available time and the evacuation decision are not easy tasks. This process is complicated and there is a notable lack of data. Thus, guidelines and methods to tackle these problems must be developed. New tools are required in order to increase the designers' and operators' possibilities to reliably evaluate the ship's capability to survive in flooding accidents.

This project sets to derive most of the missing data for validation of time-domain numerical tools for assessment of ship survivability and to develop a standard for a comprehensive measure of damaged ship stability, as a means of addressing systematically, rationally and effectively the risk of flooding.

Unlike any current regulations the envisaged standard will reflect the stochastic nature of the damaged ship stability in waves. It will be based on first-principles modeling and thus it will reflect the nature of foundering as a process comprising loss of either (or both), flotation and stability, but also and more importantly ultimate loss of human life.

Since risk-based, the standard will form a basis for decision support. It is expected that by explicit disclosure of the risks associated with ship flooding and thus addressed from early design to operation, the safety level can be raised substantially from levels of current legislation.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

EU-funded researchers have made progress in deriving helpful ship design data and simulating flood events. Their efforts will raise the level of passenger ship safety and increase decision support in the event of flooding.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

With new passenger ships able to accommodate more travellers, safety of evacuation and flooding control are of paramount importance. Assessing the time available for abandonment is not easy, and the decision to evacuate even less so. Uncertainty in both instances can be reduced with the development of new guidelines, methods and tools facilitating the assessment of whether or not a ship can survive a flooding accident.

With the support of EU funding, the 'Integrated flooding control and standard for stability and crises management' (Floodstand) project was established to advance data collection for validating time-domain numerical tools. Project partners envisioned these would facilitate assessments of ship survivability and help develop a standard for measuring the stability of a damaged vessel. Put in place, the risk-based standard will offer decision support and the ability to systematically, rationally and effectively address the risk of flooding.

Seeking to raise the level of safety foreseen by current legislation, efforts were based on finding a way to provide more detailed and reliable information as well as more effective modelling principles of ship flooding. Floodstand's analyses offered a more reliable basis for modelling water flow through doors, thus better facilitating the work of designers and operators.

Using experiments to validate their approach to modelling water flows in flood simulations, scientists improved knowledge on discharge coefficients for various passenger ship openings and structures. They were also able to offer more insight into the survivability and potential outcomes of damaged cruise ships in calm waters and in waves.

Floodstand established guidelines and uncertainty bounds, as well as simulations for assessing the damage and extent of flooding on a damaged ship. Project members also carried out assessments of the time to capsize and made headway in establishing methods for on-the-spot classification of the severity of ship flooding.

Knowledge advanced by the Floodstand project will help ensure a higher level of safety and thus significantly reduce risks to human life during waterborne transport.