Damage Stability of River Cruisers: A Case for Harmonization of International Regulations

Abstract

Rapid growth of the river cruising industry brings the safety of inland passenger ships into spotlight. A review of the existing safety regulations, however, exposes the fact that a common international regulatory framework for inland vessels currently does not exist. The paper presents damage stability assessment of a state-of-the-art European inland passenger vessel (the so-called river cruiser) performed according to the requirements of the regulations which are presently in force in Europe and worldwide. It is shown that in the same loading conditions, the vessel may be regarded as safe by some regulations and unsafe by other ones, even though all the examined regulations address the same vessel type in (approximately) the same environmental and operational conditions. Thus, the paper exemplifies the need for harmonized safety regulations for river cruisers. Additionally, the results indicate that a vessel complying with European damage stability regulations could also be considered as safe in some other major inland waterways outside of Europe.