Emergency control support system for marine accident on passenger ship

Abstract

The maritime casualties lead to loss of life, property and environmental pollution. The possibility of large amount of loss of life will be increased in case of passenger ship casualty especially. The Maritime Safety Committee (MSC) of International Maritime Organization (IMO) reinforced the regulation of passenger ship safety recently. If crews recognize the passenger's location in the ship in normal condition, they may control the passengers to prevent safety concerns. And if crews recognize the passenger's location in the ship in an emergency condition, they can help passengers including handicapped persons, children and elderly in the evacuation process. To do that, technologies for location recognition of each passenger in the ship are required. In this paper, the sensor network for location recognition of each passenger was studied. The sensor network consist of a wireless system(ZigBee) to get raw data from each passenger and a wired system (Power Line Communication, PLC) to transfer gathered data to central system. A location recognition algorithm to extract exact location from a sensed signal was developed and its performance was also tested and validated for a ship in operation condition. Finally Emergency Control Support System for evacuation assistance was studied. The proposed system will contribute to prevent loses of life from maritime casualties of passenger ship. Copyright ？ 2009 by The International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE).