IMO to focus on Passenger Ship Safety Level

Which safety level should be established for small passenger ships and what is it technically possible to acquire? These are some of the items on next week's IMO agenda.

At the 97th session of the Maritime Safety Committee (MSC), the IMO is to take a final position on the choice between these two formulas.

R = 0.000088 ∗ N + 0.7488 or R = 0.0719 x ln N + 0.291?

The formulas are part of the basis for calculating how a passenger ship must be constructed in order to have a sufficient tolerance in case of damage that results in a hole in the hull.

Director Per Sønderstrup from the Danish Maritime Authority stated, ”The formulas reflect that the IMO no longer adopts very detailed regulations that state exact technical solutions based on traditions and experiences gained back in time when ships were coal-fired. Today, the IMO has the ambition of adopting regulations based, inter alia, on research and physical principles and making it possible to construct new solutions that have not been seen before. Denmark supports this since we are working actively to make regulation goal-based and function-based rather than to promote technology-neutral regulation and innovation, thus giving Blue Denmark the best possibilities of using its competences in global competition."

Denmark advocates achieving as high a safety level as technically possible, and what is to be considered in the IMO is exactly about what is technically possible when room must still be available on board for goods and passengers and when the ship is, for example, to enter existing ferry berths. Agreement is expected about one or the other formula during the weekend once the arguments have been debated.