Maritime Alarm Handling Practices: Existing Challenges and Possible Solutions

There are now numerous examples of maritime accident reports where existing alarm handling practices – especially the quantity of alarms and the quality of alarm systems – are assessed to be more of a burden than a benefit. With the development of green fuels, this is only expected to become an increasing problem due to the chemical nature of the fuels, as the latency times and the consequences here are significantly higher. In neighboring industries such as nuclear power and process industry, there are already examples of international standards that set requirements for the quality of alarms, especially the response times associated with these. Even though these standards have been used for years with great success, similar standards are still lacking in the maritime industry. The project is expected primarily to contribute new knowledge regarding current problems and potential solutions in maritime alarm handling practices, and thereby to drive the maritime industry closer to establishing widely recognized technical common ground and standards for this.