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CHANGES AHEAD ON THE BRIDGE by Stuart Reininger Not all ships boast super sophisticated integrated bridges like that shown on this month’s cover. While a very few operators, such as Royal Caribbean, have in fact retrofitted existed ships with advanced integrated bridges, for most ships navigational system upgrades come aboard That being so, a number of ships are soon going to get a little closer to the "cockpit bridge" in that A new Chapter in the SOLAS convention requires that passenger ships and ships other than passenger ships of 3,000 gross tonnage and upwards constructed on or after July 1, 2002 will have to carry voyage data recorders (VDRs). The mandatory regulations were among a raft of amendments to the International Convention for the Safety of Life at Sea, 1974 (SOLAS) adopted by IMO’s Maritime Safety Committee (MSC), at its 73rd session from 27 November to 6 December 2000. Like the black boxes carried on aircraft, VDRs enable accident investigators to review procedures and instructions in the moments before an incident and help to identify the cause of any accident.
By the year 2007, however, all ships engaged on international voyages—regardless of when they were built— will have to be retrofitted with AIS and by 2008, even cargo and passenger ships (upwards of 500 gt) engaged in coastal trades will need the devices. Flag states, though, will have the option to exempt a ship from AIS compliance if the ship will be taken permanently out of service within two years after its scheduled implementation date.
A VoyageMaster was recently installed—complete with an IMO-compliant protective memory capsule—aboard Royal Caribbean International’s Radiance of the Seas, recently delivered by Meyer Werft, Papenburg, Germany.
Thomas A. King, Jr., Litton business area director for information technology, stated, “The new RCI cruise ship will be the first in the world to our knowledge to be fitted with a complete VDR including the recoverable IMO-compliant protective memory capsule.”
The VDR records vital information from the ship’s sensors and voice recorders in a hardened data capsule for analysis by safety investigators following an incident at sea.
The small, lightweight protective memory capsule is designed with a single-handed quick release mechanism for easy recovery. It meets stringent requirements for impact and fire resistance, and is designed to withstand deep-sea pressures at up to 6,000 meters. Beyond the “black box” function, a VDR can be configured to supply the ship and office administration systems with critical voyage data for automated reports/logs, voyage performance trends, analysis and more. This configuration may also include a satellite interface for transferring critical VDR data from ship to shore.The Litton VDR, for instance, provides a unique office playback feature. Historical and incident data can be analyzed with privacy and convenience in the corporate office, and without the necessity to travel to other locations to review the data. A VDR can also be valuable for :
The LMS VDR when fitted with the optional InfoBridge interface, can transfer a compressed twelve-hour database to a desktop in minutes via satellite. In times of crisis when the crew is relying most heavily on shore-side support, the home office can have immediate access to the ship’s complete 12-hour history.
Access to everything recorded by a data recorder, including hull stress, bilge levels, tankage, engines status, watertight doors, navigational data and more, can be on on a shoreside desktop computer and subject to analysis in minutes.
“It stands to reason that this technology gets integrated into other aspects of the industry,” says RTM Star Center Director of Training Tom Johnson. “The advantages of DP, while originally designed for OSVs, lends itself to cruise ship and tanker operations. The ability to integrate all the propulsion and controls is a great advantage in anchoring in exact position, or for instance with a cruise ship, having the option not to anchor—and eliminate the possibilities of environmental damages in some areas —and hold an exact position. Remember with DGPS factored in, you can have accuracy in positioning within one meter.”
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