The paper discusses the innovations of Safety Monitoring and Control Systems (SMCS) and their capabilities to integrate the information of safety systems onboard to support the decision making process.

In managing emergency conditions like fire or flooding, it is important not only the immediate warning but also the quality of information and the operator competence. Studies have shown that ergonomically designed workplaces reduce the risk of errors.

The new concept of the Operational Safety Centre is based on a safety monitoring and control system allowing a functional integration of systems on a common display interface. An ergonomic arrangement of the console enables the safety team operators to have clear and easy exchange of information. All most critical in­formation are displayed on video wall to be seen by everyone in the safety centre. Fur­thermore, a touch screen tactical display is used by the Staff Captain to overview the ship condition.

Further innovation is the Decision Support System (DSS) that helps the operators in managing emergency conditions. The DSS is a software tools that provides a set of actions to be executed to fight the emergency.

Monitoring the indoor position of the people is another important innovation of emergency management.

The availability of a People Tracking System (PTS) has important areas of application, from monitoring of high risk area such as CO₂ rooms to the ship evacuation procedure in complex layouts such as cruise vessels.

A PTS is based on RFID technology with a transponder worn by each person. Every time the person passes by a receiver his position is tracked and transmitted to the SMCS. The receivers can be integrated in the baseplates of fire detectors with considerable savings of installation.