What we do

The Scientific Objectives (SOs)

Project summary

SO1 – To provide a framework for the development of novel reliability and safety modelling and decision making techniques, aimed at supporting resilient and sustainable maritime and other MTO engineering systems subject to harsh and challenging environments.
SO2 – To develop new and innovative models for safety improvements.
SO3 – To develop new and innovative models for reliability improvements.
SO4 – To develop new and innovative decision-making models for safe and reliable design and operation of complex MTO engineering systems.
SO5 – To conduct case studies for testing and validating the developed safety, reliability and decision-making models.
SO6 – To develop an integrated package of practical tools, inclusive of new reliability and safety methods for investigating, improving, and optimising engineering system design and operation.

General Objectives (GOs)

GO1 – To draw together outstanding academic research teams- comprising diverse inter-disciplinary and multi-disciplinary skills and expertise in the field of reliability and safety assessment of large maritime engineering systems from Europe and Asia, through exchanges of ESRs (234 man-months) and ERs (81 man-months).
GO2 – To develop and offer education and training courses, and to disseminate knowledge to the international communities to maximise the impact of this network, and ensure the academic and industrial relevance of its research activities, addressing reliability and safety knowledge and technology enhancement.
GO2 – To create a platform for research training and transfer of knowledge, both within the network domain and towards the public domain, crossing inter-sectoral boundaries to ensure that a number of researchers at exchange are trained in this highly-demanded field, in order to meet the challenges ahead and to ensure the EU’s leading position in this area worldwide.
GO4 – To disseminate knowledge to the international communities to maximise the impact of the network, and to ensure the academic and industrial relevance of its research activities.
GO5 – To provide researchers, in particular young researchers, with intensive training-through-research programmes, as well as complementary skills training in a multi-disciplinary field of academic, industrial, and societal importance.
GO6 – To continue and to intensify long-term, multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary collaborative research mechanisms between MS/AC and Asian institutes, to address global issues of maritime reliability and safety, and other challenges.

Failure of large complex engineering systems often leads to catastrophic consequences. Their efficient and safe design and operation will avoid or reduce malfunctions, failures and accidents, which would have a significant impact on the daily life of the public in terms of service and product delivery, business interruption, economic losses, human injuries/fatalities, and property and environmental damage.

The proposed project aims to develop and apply knowledge in Reliability and Safety Engineering and Technology (RESET), for safe and reliable design and operation of large maritime (marine and offshore) and other made-to-order (MTO) engineering systems. This multi-disciplinary and inter-disciplinary project of 48 months’ duration, will formulate a consortium of complementary expertise targeting areas of academic and industrial importance. In particular, a series of integrated activities will investigate i) the framework for reliability and safety assessment, ii) system risk and reliability modelling under uncertainties, iii) fluid and structural modelling under uncertain environments, iv) fatigue and fracture assessment, v) decision making together with case studies, and vi) the development of guidelines for general application of the developed models.

The engineering systems that are addressed in this project include: a) ships, b) offshore installations, c) offshore wind farm units and d) other MTO engineering structures/units. In order to achieve an integrated project, all the ESRs and ERs involved will conduct their model development and application within the RESET framework. Novel and flexible models for addressing the identified research needs will be developed for application in situations where conventional approaches may not be confidently applied due to incompleteness, randomness and fuzziness of the available data for use in reliability and safety analysis. The collaboratively produced research results will be disseminated to a wide audience.