RFID- and MEMS-based onboard crew location recognition system for incident response

Abstract

In the event of an incident on a ship, the crew should respond in accordance with the relevant regulations and guidelines. The incident response team is formed to respond to fire or flooding situations and approach the damaged area to perform the incident response operations. From the ship captain’s viewpoint, location recognition of the incident response team is important to decide the incident response action, such as entering time to the damaged zone, evacuation order, and route control. Thus, as ships become larger and their internal structure becomes more complex, the commands of incident response using portable radio become limited. Therefore, a crew location recognition system for onboard incident response combining radio-frequency identification (RFID) and microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) was considered for application to the existing computerized incident response system or damage control system (DCS) adopted by large passenger ships and naval vessels.