This proposal is for the creation of a Research and Innovation Action aimed at advancing innovation in the Inland Waterway Transport (IWT) sector (topic MG.4.4-2014). It is called “PROMINENT – Promoting Innovation in the Inland Waterways Transport Sector” and will address the key needs for technological development, as well as the barriers to innovation and greening in the European inland navigation sector. PROMINENT thereby is fully in line with the objectives of the European action programme NAIADES-II. PROMINENT addresses all topics included in call MG.4.4-2014 and is geared towards reaching its full impacts during the project lifetime. PROMINENT is ultimately aimed at providing solutions which make inland navigation as competitive as road transport in terms of air pollutant emissions by 2020 and beyond. In parallel PROMINENT aims to further decrease the energy consumption and carbon footprint of IWT, an area where IWT has already a strong advantage compared to road transport. PROMINENT will focus on: • Massive transition towards efficient and clean vessels. • Certification and monitoring of emission performance and development of innovative regimes • Harmonisation and modernisation of professional qualifications and the stimulation of the further integration of IWT into sustainable transport chains. PROMINENT will achieve the following targets: - develop cost-effective solutions applicable to 70% of the fleet and reduce the implementation costs by 30%; - involve all relevant stakeholders; - actively address and remove implementation barriers by 2020. The PROMINENT partners have found broad support among political and commercial decision makers in the field of inland navigation. Through its direct access to relevant industrial stakeholders and Member States the consortium has obtained significant backup needed to perform the work. The commitment of these organisations will lead to a high acceptance and further dissemination of results.

Currently, both maritime and aviation sectors are lacking a systematic approach to collect and assess Human Factors information in normal and emergency conditions. There is also a lack of agreed methodology to assess human-related risks with the aim of influencing design and operation of aircraft and ships. Therefore, the research question being addressed in this project is “How to fully capture human elements and their interaction with the other system elements to enhance safety in maritime and aviation operations?” It is important to address Human Factors aspects in relation to risk-based design of system and operations in a measurable manner by taking the variation in human behaviour over time and the non-flexibility of machines into consideration. The main aim of SAFEMODE project is to develop a novel HUman Risk Informed Design (HURID) framework in order to identify, collect and assess Human Factors data to inform risk-based design of systems and operation. These aims have not been achieved previously at a desirable level due to the unavailability of systematically collected data and lack of cooperation between different transport modes. The focus will be to reduce risks for safety critical situations, (e.g. mid-air collisions, grounding, evacuation, runway excursions etc.) through the enhancement of human performance. This will be achieved through investigation of past accidents, incidents, near-misses, reports, data from everyday operations, including previously unknown uncertainties such as increasing levels of automation and increased number of drones in transportation. This information will be incorporated the HURID framework and tools and into SHIELD, the open data repository and the living database, that will be maintained and continuously updated.

The need to reduce energy consumption and emissions to bring global warming to a halt is unprecedented. Although there are energy saving strategies, most innovations cannot simply be merged in conventional ship design. As the solution for making ships carbon neutral will likely come from the use of several energy sources, a clever energy management becomes a key element in a unified ship system. De-rating of engines combined with sailing at slower speed seems to be a relatively easy way to reduce fuel consumption and GHG emissions and will most likely be used in the industry. However, this does come with reduced transport work per ship and reduced earnings. In our view, most other savings methods can deliver savings up to about 15%, not the substantial savings that are required. OPTIWISE aims at two solutions that when combined go well beyond 30% when the innovations are delivered as proposed in this project: Wind propulsion with a rigorous, holistic optimised ship design, control and operation, including a change in conventional propeller propulsion. Wind propulsion is showing its potential in research and market introductions. The holistic ship design and operation pair well with that. For common ships there is much to be gained, especially with the increased freedom in the aft ship geometry with a shift to electric propulsion. Making best use of wind propulsion also requires a rethink of designs, control and operations. To meet the objectives of this call, generic tool and methodology development are planned for optimization, performance and energy management. New developments will be applied to 3 Demo cases, consisting of a Bulk Carrier, a Tanker and a Passenger Vessel. Verification of the results will be done by testing a rotor sail rig, model tests on two ships and Bridge simulations with crew training. By the end of this project it will be clear how much energy can be save with the latest sail propulsion systems for the three types of vessels investigated