ABSTRACT
Structures and machinery accidents increase the risk for humans, environment and property. The overall risk analysis and maintenance process in the maritime sector still lacks the element of applying and implementing technologically advanced tools. In this case, condition based procedures in the maritime industry are not well established yet (Imarest, 2011). However, various developed methodologies can be found in literature. For instance, Lazakis et al. (2010) introduce a new maintenance management approach, particularly referring in the appraisal of the reliability and criticality characteristics of a vessel, thus increasing the vessel’s operational efficiency. One of the latest maintenance methodology developed by Lazakis et al. (2012) that is called Reliability and Criticality Based Maintenance (RCBM), where it has been applied on Diving Support Vessel (DSV). This methodology optimises the maintenance regimes on these vessels and it is based on reliability and criticality analysis of the main systems of the vessel. Another advanced innovative maintenance system was introduced by Lee et al. (2012). This smart maintenance method allows onsite engineering data to
1 INTRODUCTION
In daily ship operations, structural and machinery failures may lead to major accidents, endangering crew and passengers lives onboard, posing a threat to the environment, damaging the ship itself and having a great impact in terms of business losses. The INCASS project brings together a range of experienced and dedicated partners in order to tackle the issue of ship inspection by providing access to information related to ship surveys aiming to avoid ship accidents, promote maritime safety and protect the environment (EC, 2009). The INCASS partners include universities such as the University of Strathclyde Glasgow (USG), Universitat De Les Illes Balears (UIB), Classification Societies such as Lloyd’s Register EMEA (LR), RINA Services SPA, Bureau Veritas (BV), ship owners, managers (Danaos Shipping Company and AP&A) service providers (Glafcos Marine, Atlantec Enterprise Solutions GMBH (AES), Technicas Y Servicios De Ingenieria S.L. (TSI), Shipcon) and research institutes such as Deutsches Forschungszentrum Fuer Kuenstliche Intelligenz GMBH (DFKI). The INCASS consortium brings an innovative solution to the ship inspection regime, providing ship structures and machinery monitoring with real time information using ‘intelligent’ sensors. INCASS introduces inspection tools and methodologies, reliability and criticality aspects, providing an enhanced Central Database.
