NAPA Emergency Response (NAPA ER) is a powerful tool to help ship operators, national and coastal administrations, classification societies and salvage companies quickly decide on the best recovery action when a ship is in a hazardous situation.

Use of NAPA ER will allow the operator both to prepare proactively for damage scenarios, quickly test recovery strategies and to provide positive leadership based on sound technical information.

Damages ranging from flooding to structural failure and groundings can be modelled efficiently. Initial loading conditions can be imported from the ship’s Onboard-NAPA loading computer or quickly defined in the NAPA ER user interface. Recovery strategies using any combination of techniques – such as cargo transfer, shifting of liquid loads, pumping, mass loading, over-pressurization and under-pressurization – can simultaneously be analysed as serial or alternative actions.

Different scenarios can be tested using a logical tree structure of dependent actions and the results – for instance, cargo outflow, stability, grounding force, shear force and bending moment – can be studied throughout the tidal range. Multi-objective genetic algorithms can be harnessed to quickly evaluate and optimize loading combinations in order to achieve a desired floating position while keeping the ship within stability or structural constraints.

NAPA ER will allow the ship operator minimize economic and environmental impact in the event of an accident. The NAPA ship model generated, whether during the design process, the plan approval process or for Onboard-NAPA, can be used directly in this marine salvage engineering software package. Ship models can be stored locally in the NAPA system and accessed through the intuitive interface.

NAPA ER is currently used by leading ship emergency response service-providers and ship owners.

In October 2004, the IMO Marine Environment Protection Committee (MEPC 52) proposed amendments to Regulation 26 of MARPOL 73/78 Annex I. These proposals specified that all new and existing oil tankers of 5000 tonnes deadweight and above should have access to computerized, shore-based damage stability and residual structural strength calculation programs.

These proposals have now been adopted and will enter into force on 1 January 2007 as Regulation 37 of the revised Annex I.

The use of NAPA ER will ensure compliance with these new regulations.