Flexibility in Ship Design

The new “Technical Committee on Risk Management” of Germanischer Lloyd was established to respond to the growing significance of risk-based approaches for the maritime industry. The new committee’s main objective is facilitation and consolidation of industry’s needs related to the application of risk-based methods for future profitable maritime business.

“Rule development at GL incorporates Formal Safety Assessment,” said Dr Edzard Brünner, Head of Competence Centre Rule Development. He presented the new rule development process at GL, IMO goal-based standards as future requirement for class rules, structural reliability analysis as a tool to be used to determine safety factors, the challenges involved in approving alternative design and arrangements and the requirements related to safe return to port. With “Safe Return to Port”, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) has for the first time defined performance requirements for essential systems on passenger ships under predefined casualty scenarios. The coming SOLAS requirements to “Safe Return to Port” call for defined flooding as well as fire casualties the application of different and more risk based methods compared to the prescriptive requirements of today.

The committee also took a close look at the current IMO activities related to risk management. With the two concepts “goal-based standards” and “safe return to port” IMO is working on new regulations. Existing regulations and guidelines cover formal safety assessment, alternative design and arrangements for fire safety, life saving appliances and probabilistic damage stability.