On the safety level of the SOLAS 2009 damage stability rules for RoPax vessels

Damage Survivability of Passenger Ships—Re-Engineering the Safety Factor

“…The current measure of survivability of a damaged ship in a seaway has been shown to be inaccurate and inadequate practically from the moment of its introduction within the probabilistic framework of damage stability, known commonly as SOLAS 2009 [1]. Some research indicated existence of a safety gap between the new SOLAS and SOLAS90 + Stockholm Agreement (SA [2]), e.g., [3] where in conclusions, the authors state that "Applied to two new RoPax designs, it has been revealed that the safety level provided by the new SOLAS 2009 rules is significantly lower compared to the old damage stability rules SOLAS 90 in conjunction with the Stockholm Agreement. ", while other suggested that the new regulations were more demanding (e.g., in terms of GM requirements than the SOLAS90 + Stockholm Agreement) for large RoPax ships while being generally less stringent for small ferries [4].…”