EU-funded R&D Produces New Ship Bridge Designs
A three-year EU-funded project, CASCADe, has developed new methodologies in which information is shared and displayed on a ship’s bridge, helping to improve efficiency on board and contribute toward the prevention of accidents at sea. Drawing directly from the experience of seafarers, CASCADe has developed a new adaptive bridge design methodology that treats both human agents and electronic equipment as parts of a cooperative system. This allows for the sharing of information to be optimized. In addition, CASCADe has developed a set of adaptive bridge displays.
Integrated Bridge Shaping the Future
While the Integrated Bridge increasingly plays a bigger role in various shipbuilding programs, in many cases the degree of integration can be limited and does not allows a fully functional integration of different navigation systems or further ship systems on the bridge. In tandem there has been an increasing demand for higher level integrated bridge systems, which was reasonably driven by more sophisticated and safety-sensitive vessels such as cruise ships, specialized vessels and few oil tankers.
New R&D Project to Help Enhance Maritime Safety
Almost 80% of collisions and groundings occur due to a failure of bridge systems and their usage. A new three-year European research project, part funded by the EU has been launched to help increase safety onboard vessels. CASCADe, (model-based Cooperative and Adaptive ship-based Context Aware Design) aims to address the lack of symbiosis which exists between current bridge design, operational procedures and the end user. In the maritime environment there is a proliferation of increasingly complex technology. Studies have shown that the use of instruments with a range of different user interfaces or the provision of too much information can lead to errors and a reduction in performance.
Updates on the Shipdex™ Protocol
On October 7th 2008, Digital Ship held its 2nd conference for Shipdex™, a new protocol to provide ship technical information electronically, rather than on paper. Shipdex™ was founded in 2007 by two senior managers of shipping companies, Grimaldi Naples and Intership Navigation, who thought that the industry should move beyond supplying all technical paperwork (including maintenance and repair manuals, lists of spare parts and drawings) as paper documents, which then have to be typed into company maintenance and purchasing systems.
