New international guidelines from ISO aims to provide a boost to the technology that detects people who fall overboard from a cruise ship.
Over 27 mill peoples are expected to take a cruise this year, as the industry booms with more ships, destinations and themes available.
The safety of these ships is rarely questioned, yet an average of 21 ‘man overboard’ incidents occur every year, fuelling an industry sector that develops detection systems to raise the alarm and locate the victims, as soon as possible.
Until now, there have been no internationally agreed requirements to evaluate the effectiveness of such systems.
The new publicly available specification ISO/PAS 21195, Ships and marine technology – Systems for the detection of persons while going overboard from ships (man overboard detection), provides internationally agreed technical specifications for systems designed to detect a person who has gone overboard from a passenger ship.
It covers how the system is expected to perform in a range of environmental conditions and incident profiles.
Robin Townsend, Chair of ISO/TC 8/SC 1, the ISO subcommittee that developed the standard, said that this is the first document of its kind to standardise and clearly define technical specifications for such systems in the cruise ship industry.
“With everyone working from the same set of requirements, manufacturers can more easily evaluate safety, effectiveness and performance of the systems,” he explained. “This also provides a strong foundation on which new technologies can be developed.”
“Our intention is now to develop the document into a full international standard. Therefore, we encourage feedback and input from relevant stakeholders, such as those in the cruise ship industry, systems developers or advocacy groups, to ensure it is as robust and effective as possible.”
ISO/PAS 21195 was developed by technical committee ISO/TC 8, Ships and marine technology, sub-committee SC 1, Maritime safety, whose secretariat is at ANSI, ISO’s member for the US.
