NAPA, the leading global maritime software house,today launched an innovative data-led package of monitoring, analytic and predictive solutions to increase the safety of passenger vessels and save lives in emergency situations. NAPA Safety Solutions, which harnesses the power of the volume and variety of data being collected and processed aboard vessels, was revealed to industry leaders at Cruise Shipping Miami today.

NAPA Safety Solutions is a collection of functions and services for both the pro-active safety management of everyday operations and an advanced system to support the vital decisions taken in the first few hours of an emergency situation.

Developed to integrate the wide range of technical safety systems on board modern passenger ships, NAPA Safety Solutions include functions for planning, logging, monitoring and analysing stability and safety data. The system provides Masters with easy-to-use, meaningful tools that give them the information they need to ensure the safe day-to-day running of the ship. This includes functions for load planning, operational data logging and safety level monitoring. It also displays a simple “traffic light” vulnerability meter based on key indicators such as watertight door status, navigational status and stability condition.

The system’s true value lies in the first critical minutes and hours of an emergency situation, when it provides essential information and predictive analysis to help the Master make confident and informed life-or-death decisions.

Kevin Douglas, VP Marine Newbuilding &amp; Fleet Design, RCCL commented:

“At Royal Caribbean, our mantra is continuous improvement. NAPA Safety Solutions allows us to upgrade our onboard safety and security software, so that we can provide our guests and crew with the highest level of safety.”

Juha Heikinheimo, President, NAPA commented:

“Safety in the shipping industry has improved significantly in recent years and yet news media provides regular reminders that we could be doing better. NAPA was working on the European Union’s FLOODSTAND project, to create algorithms and highly accurate flooding prediction models, when the Costa Concordia incident occurred. Understanding the power of data and analysis to transform our understanding and ensure informed decision-making, we re-doubled our efforts to create a comprehensive safety solution for passenger vessels.

“We want to thank our partners and supporters from the cruise and ferry industry for helping us to create an operational safety system that incorporates the wide variety of safety information aboard and makes it easy to act upon. We genuinely believe that, in unfortunate circumstances, the training, information and predictions offered by NAPA Safety Solutions will help Masters to save lives.”

The first few hours after a vessel begins taking on water are the most critical, especially in cases where the ship itself is eventually lost. In some notable recent incidents involving total loss of passenger vessels it has been found that lives could have been saved if the Masters had better awareness of the extent of the damage to their ship and better predictive tools in use for assessing the survivability of the persons onboard.

NAPA Safety Solutions aim to deliver an effective response during these first critical hours. The system sounds the alarm and – using NAPA’s extensive in-house research and algorithms developed in the EU FLOODSTAND project – begins calculating predictions the moment flooding is detected by the sensors. It accurately predicts if and when the vessel will overturn or sink and for example the point at which list will render the lifeboats inoperable. The fast availability of this reliable information removes the need for guesswork and empowers Masters to make confident decisions as soon as possible in an emergency situation, supporting the crew in saving lives from the earliest opportunity.