Modelling of compartment connectivity and probabilistic assessment of progressive flooding stages for a damaged ship

Large cruise vessels have subdivision and compartment connectivity of unique complexity, making predictions of floodwater propagation a particularly challenging task. Evermore so, the plethora of internal openings leads to a large number of opening status combinations, a well-known problem in identifying flooding paths and assessing progressive flooding stages. This paper presents a novel approach aiming at reducing the problem to manageable size. The method enables a fully probabilistic approach for assessing progressive flooding stages and the examples presented demonstrate that it converges to a practical number of possible realisations even in the case of a realistic model of a large cruise vessel. The result show clearly that the methodology will render overly simplified models for assessment of vulnerability from internal openings obsolete and that it may be further refined for implementation to a range of applications.