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Executive Summary 
 

The drafting of the SafePASS Requirements for Future LSA and PSE has built on the work, ideas and outputs from the SafePASS WP3 Workshop in Glasgow, the RCCL Jewel of the Seas Questionnaire and the online Future Requirements Questionnaire. It has also drawn on the experience of the LSA OEMs involved in the consortium and the work already undertaken for deliverables D2.1 - Evacuation Processes: Best practices, tools and gaps and D2.2 - SafePASS Mission and Operational KPIs.

This report also builds on the Design Thinking process that has been adopted for the project, with this being the Define phase.

A number of key issues or themes were noted during the workshop and questionnaires, relating to the wide demographics onboard vessels, equipment reliability and performance, the ability to incorporate SMART technology into or onto them and how training and maintenance are conducted on the equipment when onboard the vessel.

The need to adopt a different approach in developing novel LSA and PSE is highlighted by the review of the current trends in LSA and PSE, where the equipment capacity is increasing, stored space onboard is decreasing and safety levels are increasing slower than the corresponding technology. The current trends are mainly being driven by the current prescriptive regulations that constrain the design of the equipment within certain boundaries. These prescriptive requirements are isolated from the real-world scenarios of fire or flood and the actual performance of the equipment in those situations. Some progressive vessel owners, yards and OEMs are utilising the AD&A (Alternative Design and Appraisal) process to introduce novel equipment onboard. However, this process is unwieldy and involves extensive review by all parties involved in delivering the vessel, as it carried out on a case-by-case basis.

A GBS approach has been adopted in generating the Future Requirements by identifying and quantifying a certain need, additional safety level or through experience of the lack of a particular feature or capability. In parallel, the consolidated list of User Requirements that were defined in D2.3 - SafePASS Personas and respective scenarios of use have been taken into account, in order to correlate the functional requirements of the developed system with specific user needs.

During the development of the Requirements, it became evident for the Consortium that they should think out of the box, so as to develop novel Systems that will improve Evacuation. In order to encourage the creative thinking, the Combined LSA Requirements were developed in that way, so as not to constrain the integration of the developments within either a Hardshell (lifeboat style) or Softshell (inflatable) category.

The Requirements for each type of equipment were ranked as capabilities that the equipment Must, Should or Could have. These Functions also had a specific Performance requirement identified, so that the effectiveness could be verified or demonstrated.

As part of the Performance Requirements, the approach of the Offshore Oil and Gas Sector has been adopted into the Combined LSA Requirements. This encourages the assessment of the performance of the equipment when it is installed in a particular location onboard a vessel, to ensure it will perform as expected in different conditions (the sea is agitated for 80% of the time) or real-world scenarios of fire or flooding.

The increased understanding of how the LSA performs with respect to the vessel and the passengers boarding in those different scenarios or locations, as well as the lifeboats leaving the vessel, will allow the equipment to be fully integrated into the overall vessel design and perform better, comparing to the approach that the requirements currently drive.

The Functional and Performance Requirements have been documented in a format so that they can be presented to IMO and encourage their adoption into the current GBS work that is ongoing and will form part of the deliverable D9.7 – IMO Recommendations.

The Requirements for Future PSE and LSA will, in turn, allow the development of the concepts and prototypes to be created as part of the deliverables D3.4, D3.5, D3.6 and D3.7. The work that is completed as part of D3.8 – LSA Model Testing will further assist in the definition of the performance requirements for different locations onboard the vessel, in different critical scenarios and conditions.