The FLARE consortium comprises key stakeholders from industry, academia and policy makers, involved in ship flooding risk research as a Group for over twenty years (HARDER, SAFEDOR, GOALDS, EMSA III, eSafe), the latter three focussing on passenger ships. This offers a unique knowledge base and capability to support targeted new developments and expedite implementation. The overriding objective is to develop a Risk-Based methodology for 'live' flooding risk assessment and control, to be achieved by: - Creating an updated accident database for passenger ships and damages. Using this with support from suitably verified flooding simulation tools to develop a generic risk model for flooding incidents, accounting for collision and grounding with focus on cost-effective risk containment in emergencies. - Ensuring the risk model is generic (all incidents in one model), holistic (active and passive measures) with potential application to newbuildings and existing ships. - A risk-aware approach post-flooding incidents from susceptibility to flooding to emergency response, including mustering and abandonment in extreme flooding scenarios. - Innovative technical solutions at TRL5 in ship concepts and equipment targeting risk containment, including: crashworthiness; minimising the risk from WT doors; use of highly expandable foam post-incident; decision support for crisis management. - Developing a proposal for the revision of relevant IMO regulations towards a risk-based approach to contain and control risk in passenger ships from flooding incidents.

Maritime disasters in recent years are a stark reminder of the imperative need for timely and effective evacuation of large passenger ships during emergency. The Lynceus2Market project addresses this challenge through delivering a revolutionary operational system for safe evacuation based on innovative people localisation technologies. The system consists of: 1) Localisable life jackets that can provide passenger location in real-time during emergency 2) Smart smoke detectors that also act as base stations of an on-board localisation system 3) Innovative localisable bracelets able to send activity data to the emergency management team 4) Low cost fire and flooding escalation monitoring sensor notes 5) novel mustering handheld devices for automatic identification and counting of passengers during evacuation 6) Smart localisable cabin key cards 7) Intelligent decision support software able to fuse all localisation, activity and disaster escalation data to provide an integrated real-time visualisation, passenger counting and evacuation decision support 8) Innovative shore or ship-launched Unmanned Aerial Vehicle for localising people in the sea in short time and assisting search and rescue operations when accident occurs in extreme weather, during the night or in a remote location 9) Low-cost rescue-boat mounted radars for people localisation in the vicinity of the boat. The proposed project is based on the promising results developed in the FP7 LYNCEUS project where the innovative technologies were tested in lab and in small scale pilots. Lynceus2Market brings together European global players in the field, such as cruise ship owners, operators, ship builders, maritime equipment manufacturers, a classification society, industry associations and important technology organisations with the aim to implement the first market replication of these technologies and products. The Lynceus2Market will create significant impact by saving passenger lives during maritime accidents.

Evacuating a large passenger ship is a safety-critical and strictly time-bound task and a complex decision-making process based on the evolving situation and the information available. Timely evacuation requires fast and accurate evaluation of ship’s condition and estimation of remaining evacuation time. The assumption that all passengers will be able to comprehend and follow instructions or even that the crew will be able to communicate verbally during a crisis is very optimistic. In response, a system that will provide clear instructions and guide passengers safely on how to react in an emergency situation without reliance on any passenger skills or experience is of paramount importance for any large passenger ship. SafePASS will radically redefine the evacuation processes, evacuation systems/equipment and international regulations for passenger ships in all environments, hazards and weather conditions, independently of the demographic factor, by developing an integrated system that will collectively monitor, process and inform during emergencies both crew and passengers of the optimal evacuation routes, coupled with advanced, intuitive and easy to use LSA, resulting to a significant reduction of the total time required for ship evacuation and increased safety. SafePASS is an integrated solution that provides passengers tailored evacuation assistance, assists the crew by enhancing their situational awareness and ability to handle de-skilled equipment, while incorporating fail-safe processes for the evacuation procedure. SafePASS prototypes will be validated in real environment, on a cruise ship and in LSA manufacturers testbeds and towing tanks. The consortium, consisting of 15 partners, amongst which academic institutions, classification societies, innovative SMEs, shipyard, LSA manufacturers and a cruise operator, safeguards both the high impact and implementation of the project results, through the preparation of a set of recommendations for IMO submission.