PALAEMON – A holistic passenger ship evacuation and rescue ecosystem
With so many disasters still happening at sea with passenger cruise ships, ferries and cargoes, it was time to think of a new approach for the evacuation and rescue eco-system.
PALAEMON is an European project in implementation phase that proposes the development and evaluation of a sophisticated mass centralised evacuation system for passenger ships. The new intelligent ecosystem incorporates innovative technologies for sensing, people monitoring and counting and localisation services as well as real-time data access during accident time. It will be integrated into an independent, smart situation-awareness and guidance system for sustaining an evacuation route for a large number of passengers. Emergency response in EU passenger ships will become more efficient. PALAEMON combines expertise from Maritime/Naval architects to develop the extraction modules and from world leading ITC companies and research bodies to develop a highly innovative solution that will comply with the regulatory framework.
Hi-tech solutions from SIVECO will aid the rescuers
As a technological partner, SIVECO will lead the research and development of Augmented Reality glasses for ship crew. These special devices enable safe orientation in heterogeneous ship decks based on advanced AR technologies, indoor position technologies and hardware accelerated visual sensors.
Through the smart sensors all passengers will be accounted for. With the new technology, the crew will be aided to swiftly get to hard to get places, for persons that are stranded or trapped and get them to safe evacuation areas. Information on the ship’s condition will be real time transmitted through the AR, about flooded or damaged sections and aid in guiding the crew in the evacuation procedure.
The goal is to achieve zero casualties and no person left behind!
Furthermore, having great expertise in training activities, SIVECO will be leading the PALAEMON Academy.
Prevention first
Continuous monitoring and permanent control will enhance the capacity to detect, prevent and mitigate any issue and potential harm arising from physical and man-made accidents and disasters. The proposed ecosystem will include the new IMO standard for data exchange-VDES.
Since maritime disasters in recent years are a stark reminder of the imperative need for timely and effective evacuation of large passenger ships during emergencies, the aim of this project is to maximize the effectiveness of passenger evacuation, from large Cruise and RoPax ships.
Stakeholders from the field of cruise ship manufacturing, large cruise ship operators, classification societies, sensor and technology organizations will combine the expertise with a multidisciplinary group of innovators (such as innovative start-ups, consolidated SMEs in the smart ICT domain, experts in the ship evacuation domain from research institutes, international networks in maritime and key industry drivers).
And the heroes of this project are…
The coordinator, AIRBUS DEFENCE AND SPACE SAS (France), has teamed up with SIVECO ROMANIA, but also with AUTORITATEA NAVALA ROMANA (Romania), ATOS SPAIN, KONNEKT ABLE TECHNOLOGIES LIMITED (Ireland), ENGITEC SYSTEMS INTERNATIONAL LIMITED and IoT APPLICATIONS AND MULTI-LAYER DEVELOPMENT (both from Cyprus), JOHANNITER OSTERREICH AUSBILDUNG UND FORSCHUNG GEMEINNUTZIGE GMBH (Austria), NATIONAL TECHNICAL UNIVERSITY OF ATHENS – NTUA (Greece), ADVANTIC SISTEMAS Y SERVICIOS SL (Spain), JADE HOCHSCHULE WILHELMSHAVEN / OLDENBURG / ELSFLETH (Germany), ERICSSON HELLAS SA TILEPIKOINONIAKOY ILINOX (Greece), DANAOS SHIPPING COMPANY LIMITED (Cyprus), ENGINEERS FOR BUSINESS IKE (Greece), ASTILLEROS DE SANTANDER SA (Spain), DNV GL HELLAS SA (Greece), AdMeS (Greece), THALES ITALIA SPA (Italy), UNIVERSIDAD DE ALCALA (Spain), PANEPISTIMIO AIGAIOU (Greece), WISER SRL (Italy), ANONYMOS NAFTILIAKI ETAIREIA KRITIS (Greece), OESTERREICHISCHER LLOYD SEEREEDEREI (Cyprus).