New international standards for passenger ship safety are set to be adopted by IMO’s Maritime Safety Committee (MSC) at its ten-day long meeting in Istanbul, Turkey, which starts tomorrow.
Other important issues on the MSC agenda include the further development of goal-based standards and discussion of security and facilitation issues related to the carriage of containers by ships.
The package of draft amendments to SOLAS, which were approved at the last MSC session in May, are the result of a comprehensive review of passenger ship safety initiated in 2000 with the aim of assessing whether the current regulations were adequate, in particular for the large passenger ships being built.
The work in developing the draft new and amended regulations has based its guiding philosophy on the dual premise that the regulatory framework should place more emphasis on the prevention of a casualty from occurring in the first place and that future passenger ships should be designed for improved survivability so that, in the event of a casualty, persons can stay safely on board as the ship proceeds to port.
The proposed amendments include new concepts such as the incorporation of criteria for the casualty threshold (the amount of damage a ship is able to withstand, according to the design basis, and still safely return to port) into SOLAS chapters II-1 and II-2. The amendments also provide regulatory flexibility so that ship designers can meet any safety challenges the future may bring.