06.14.17
The European project Lynceus2Market is developing powerful tools to enable commanders of large ships to efficiently locate people during evacuation. Using CSEM ultra-low power wireless “icycom” technology, the project proposes an innovative, unobtrusive localization system able to display the positions of individuals as dots on a screen and assess individuals’ health status at the same time.
Safe and efficient passenger evacuation in case of an emergency is a hot topic in the IMO (International Maritime Organisation) in the aftermath of the Costa Concordia and the South Korean Sewol ferry tragedies, where 32 people and approximately 300 people respectively were lost. Even though the causes of these tragedies were different, both evacuations were delayed and chaotic.
The investigation report for the sinking of the Queen of the North (Transportation Safety Board of Canada, 2008) 7, which resulted in the death of two passengers, stated that, “Until technology is introduced into the preparation for abandonment phase, this stage will continue to be a weak link in the abandonment process – to the detriment of passenger and crew safety.”
Lynceus2Market meets this need by introducing a number of technology products for safe and timely evacuation of large passenger ships. The Lynceus2Market project has successfully reached its mid-point mark implementing a large number of innovation activities and achieving impressive results.
In the last 18 months the project has further advanced the Lynceus technologies to make them market ready, inlcuding:
• New wireless sensors embedded in life-jackets, bracelets and cabin key cards.
• Smart gateways for localization of people in large passenger ships - new mustering handheld device interfaces for the identification and counting of passengers during evacuation utilizing existing RFID infrastructure.
• New improved protocols for power efficiency and backbone capacity enhancement, taking into account the industry’s evacuation and SAR procedures for large passenger ships.
Small scale demonstrations have been conducted in a containerized environment, with similar wave transmission properties as of a cruise ship. For the mid-scale demonstration, the system has been fitted in the Thomson Spirit ship from Celestyal cruises. Mid-scale tests took place between January-March 2017 and helped to identify and overcome any key issues relevant to the large-scale demonstrations.
Safe and efficient passenger evacuation in case of an emergency is a hot topic in the IMO (International Maritime Organisation) in the aftermath of the Costa Concordia and the South Korean Sewol ferry tragedies, where 32 people and approximately 300 people respectively were lost. Even though the causes of these tragedies were different, both evacuations were delayed and chaotic.
The investigation report for the sinking of the Queen of the North (Transportation Safety Board of Canada, 2008) 7, which resulted in the death of two passengers, stated that, “Until technology is introduced into the preparation for abandonment phase, this stage will continue to be a weak link in the abandonment process – to the detriment of passenger and crew safety.”
Lynceus2Market meets this need by introducing a number of technology products for safe and timely evacuation of large passenger ships. The Lynceus2Market project has successfully reached its mid-point mark implementing a large number of innovation activities and achieving impressive results.
In the last 18 months the project has further advanced the Lynceus technologies to make them market ready, inlcuding:
• New wireless sensors embedded in life-jackets, bracelets and cabin key cards.
• Smart gateways for localization of people in large passenger ships - new mustering handheld device interfaces for the identification and counting of passengers during evacuation utilizing existing RFID infrastructure.
• New improved protocols for power efficiency and backbone capacity enhancement, taking into account the industry’s evacuation and SAR procedures for large passenger ships.
Small scale demonstrations have been conducted in a containerized environment, with similar wave transmission properties as of a cruise ship. For the mid-scale demonstration, the system has been fitted in the Thomson Spirit ship from Celestyal cruises. Mid-scale tests took place between January-March 2017 and helped to identify and overcome any key issues relevant to the large-scale demonstrations.