INTRODUCTION

This one day conference by Lloyds Register and Digital Ship will explore best practise in ship control, alarms and monitoring systems, making sure all components are 100 per cent reliable, safe and as easy to use as possible, with maximum crew satisfaction, and making sure the shipyard gives you what you need.

The event will commence with owners reviewing their problems, allow manufactures to respond, add the class and flag perspective and then open out into a workshop to look at ways forward (including ISO 17894 and DSR).

It will include the results of ATOMOS, the 15m euro, 10 year European Commission research project into shipboard systems dependability

If you detest going on watch because you've got hundreds of alarms, you know there are problems with the control systems, you press a button and don't know what's going to happen, or you have to read manuals half asleep - you're going to find a job somewhere else. Bad technology systems can really wreck people's lives.

Meanwhile ship systems are actually being integrated less and less, because no-one wants the responsibility of integrating them. Programmable electrical systems are not perfect substitutes for the electromechanical systems and crew tasks they replace. These systems can help integrate different complex systems together, enabling improved monitoring and situational awareness - but they can contain defects, which might not be detected until the ship has been in operation for a few years.

Programmable electrical systems can automate lower level shipboard tasks, help shipboard data capture, integrate different tasks together.

Eventually the ship becomes just one system of interlinked programmable electrical systems.