Damage Control System: an Application for Ship Safety and Security Francesca Calabrese*, Marco Cataldo*, Angelo Corallo**, Andrea De Pascalis*, Luisa Mancarella*, Luigi Ostuni*, Alessandro Antonio Zizzari*** *Apphia s.r.l. Via Clementina Carrelli, 73100 Lecce, Italy Email: [francesca.calabrese, marco.cataldo, andrea.depascalis, luisa.mancarella, luigi.ostuni]@apphia.it, web page: http://www.apphia.it. ** Department of Innovation Engineering, University of Salento, Via Monteroni s.n., 73100 Lecce, Italy Email: angelo.corallo@unisalento.it *** Centro Cultura Innovativa d’Impresa (CCII), University of Salento c/o Euro-Mediterranean Incubator, Campus Ecotekne, Via Monteroni s.n., 73100 Lecce, Italy Email: alessandro.zizzari@unisalento.it, web page: http://www.cpdm.unisalento.it Abstract: A crucial application in naval field called Damage Control System (DCS) is the focus of this paper. DCS is an information-retrieval and equipment-control system that allows ship personnel to detect, analyze, and handle various types of situations which are hazardous for shipboard safety. The DCS is embedded in the Integrated Platform Management System (IPMS) and developed by researches of, Apphia s.r.l., CCII (Centro Cultura Innovativa d’Impresa) of University of Salento and Avio S.p.A.. Keywords: Marine applications, Damage Control System 1. INTRODUCTION Nowadays, different national navies have identified the reduction of through-life costs of vessels as a priority, primarily through optimization of crew size as a major contributor to overall operating expenses. For instance, the Canadian Agency for Defence R&D (DRDC) started a project aimed to investigate how the goal of crew reduction for the new classes of ships can be achieved, and this without affecting damage control capabilities or jeopardizing the ability of ships to complete their missions [Cosby and Lamontagne (2006)]. On all ships, the safety on board is still a mostly manual and manpower-intensive function and more automatic and effective systems are thus required to assist the crew in taking corrective actions. At this purpose, technologies such as video processing and visualization, expert systems, platform management, simulators, and human-system interfaces can be integrated into a more complex architecture for shipboard management and control, called Integrated Platform Management System (IPMS). The Damage Control System (DCS) is the IPMS module that gives ship personnel the ability to detect, analyze, and handle various types of damage and hazard control situations, based on the collection and processing of large quantities of shipboard information. The noteworthiness of these systems today is also evidenced by the number and importance of marine automation market players that are working in the design and development of DCS applications. DCS presents into its Human Machine Interface (HMI) a large amount of information in dedicated displays that enables the operator to identify the casualty and instantaneously initiate the right corrective action. The HMI integrates the CAD drawings of the ship decks, the compartments, the subsystems monitored with their respective devices, the camera visualization, data manually insert by operator and stability tabular and graphical results giving to the operator a gradual levels of investigation. Furthermore, information sharing between various Multi Function Consoles (MFCs) is provided in manner to assist a coordinated and precise action. The requirement collection, design and implementation activities for the DCS development were framed within collaborative project activities carried on by the researchers of the Centro Cultura Innovativa d’Impresa (CCII) of University of Salento and the engineers at Apphia s.r.l.. Apphia is an engineering company specialized in research and development in many areas of intervention, especially in the design and implementation of advanced automation and simulation applications, but also in innovative manufacturing and engineering analysis. The paper is organized as follows: in the next section an overview of the system is reported, while section 2 describes the DCS modules and functionalities and section 3 reports a description of each module and some visualization aspects. 9th IFAC Conference on Manoeuvring and Control of Marine Craft, 2012 The International Federation of Automatic Control September 19-21, 2012. Arenzano, Italy ©2012 IFAC 10.3182/20120919-3-IT-2046.00018 103